Furloughing staff

[Bobbins]

And for those bringing Joe Lewis into this, I hope the guy is quaking. Tax havens are an abomination, as is tax avoidance. My silver lining in all this is a global consensus that they help no one apart from 0.001%. Governments should be digging into those siloed cash reserves to fund the response. Billionaires and tax is much bigger than Spurs, it's the rot in society.

Tax avoidance isn’t an abomination. You do it every month when you get paid and only pay the tax you owe.

Tax evasion is a crime.

 

[Yid-ol]

Tax avoidance isn’t an abomination. You do it every month when you get paid and only pay the tax you owe.

Tax evasion is a crime.

Not sure I agree tax avoidance is when people get paid and pay the correct amount of tax, isn't it more when you find legal loopholes to reduce the amount of tax due from the normal amount?

But agree with it is legal.

 

[TheRevolution]

The higher ups at the club haven't done enough imo. Levy, Donna-Maria Cullen and the other club directors should have taken a bigger salary cut to save the rest of the staff. Lets be real here, a 20% pay cut for the directors still leaves them paid very handsomely. Heck, a 60% pay cut and they would still be on alot more money than I ever got working full time.

Capitalism has failed society during this pandemic and we are an example of that.

 

[Yid-ol]

The higher ups at the club haven't done enough imo. Levy, Donna-Maria Cullen and the other club directors should have taken a bigger salary cut to save the rest of the staff. Lets be real here, a 20% pay cut for the directors still leaves them paid very handsomely. Heck, a 60% pay cut and they would still be on alot more money than I ever got working full time.

Capitalism has failed society during this pandemic and we are an example of that.

But people live within their means, so someone taking a 60% decrease will probably mean bills might not get paid.

Say for example person 1 is on 2k a month, person 2 is on 6k a month.

So person 1 has outgoing of 1.5k a month and person 2 has outgoing of 5k a month. Say each take a 20% decrease it's the one earning 6k a month that hits financial problems first.

It's easy to sit and criticize people on higher wages for not doing their part, but we don't know their financial situation and people on lower wages than you might look at you and think you could do more.

 

[thekneaf]

Tax avoidance isn’t an abomination. You do it every month when you get paid and only pay the tax you owe.

Tax evasion is a crime.

Evasion is a crime. I'm going further, using tax loop holes in ways not intended by the system is also wrong. It's a huge grey area and one accountants dance in regularly. I'm PAYE, so my tax couldn't be simpler. I don't avoid any tax by accounting tricks. But that's just me.

 

[bubble07]

What pisses me off is when reporters say its great what liverpool have now done. Should tottenham follow suit? What about the other clubs??

 

[Dinghy]

Evasion is a crime. I'm going further, using tax loop holes in ways not intended by the system is also wrong. It's a huge grey area and one accountants dance in regularly. I'm PAYE, so my tax couldn't be simpler. I don't avoid any tax by accounting tricks. But that's just me.

IIRC using tax loop holes in ways not intended is also a crime and accountants now have to report this so if you have evidence... ?
Also... you have a pension? Though PAYE? It reduces your taxable pay and avoids tax.
Ever asked for a cash price?
Ever bought a car out of the small ads?
Ever filled in a self assessment return?

 

[thekneaf]

IIRC using tax loop holes in ways not intended is also a crime and accountants now have to report this so if you have evidence... ?
Also... you have a pension? Though PAYE? It reduces your taxable pay and avoids tax.
Ever asked for a cash price?
Ever bought a car out of the small ads?
Ever filled in a self assessment return?

Pensions is stretching it, even you'd admit that.

And no to the other three. Cash price is facilitating someone else avoiding/ evading tax. Don't do it.

Don't drive, not ever done a self assessment.

What you're doing here is claiming that people don't do questionable things with tax. We all know HMRC staffing levels are at an all time low, so catching people out isn't easy.

I'll apologise for the liberal use of some of the words, but my point stands. There is a sliding scale between avoidance and evasion and someone with any awareness of how law works should understand that.

 

[Bobbins]

Would love to know the full story of what went on between him and Poch.

Not sure I agree tax avoidance is when people get paid and pay the correct amount of tax, isn't it more when you find legal loopholes to reduce the amount of tax due from the normal amount?

But agree with it is legal.

Evasion is a crime. I'm going further, using tax loop holes in ways not intended by the system is also wrong. It's a huge grey area and one accountants dance in regularly. I'm PAYE, so my tax couldn't be simpler. I don't avoid any tax by accounting tricks. But that's just me.

You avoid tax every time you get paid, as I said. Being PAYE doesn't mean a thing. If your employer had you on the wrong tax code, like a lot of people are on their first month or two of pay, you would correct them so that you paid the correct amount of tax, which would reduce your tax burden. That's tax avoidance. The term simply means not paying tax you don't legally owe.

As Dinghy has already pointed out, if you've ever paid someone cash for a job (and I don't believe for one second you've NEVER paid cash in hand for anything in your life), if you've ever bought something privately, if you've ever owned a business and made sure you only pay what you owe, then you've taken part in tax avoidance.

Joe Lewis doesn't use "loopholes in the system". He is a tax exile, meaning he has built his entire financial life around not paying any tax in the country of his birth by not living there or having any of his companies registered there. There's nothing we can do about this while certain countries act as tax havens. It is all perfectly legal, however much we might disagree with it.

There's a reason that the terms avoidance and evasion are legally different - one is legal and the other simply isn't. It's an important distinction because by talking about tax avoidance in the same terms as evasion is a dangerous lumping-together of very different cases and effectively assumes that millions of people across the country are engaged in criminal activity.

Every business owner in the country makes an effort to minimise their tax bill. That is not illegal and not morally wrong. The only cases of tax avoidance that are dodgy are those which are using clever tax schemes to hide their true tax burden (such as the celeb offshoring schemes which came out a few years ago).

Oh and HMRC has more staff than ever before - they have massively increased their numbers of inspection and data officers over the last 5-10 years.

 

[Yid-ol]

You avoid tax every time you get paid, as I said. Being PAYE doesn't mean a thing. If your employer had you on the wrong tax code, like a lot of people are on their first month or two of pay, you would correct them so that you paid the correct amount of tax, which would reduce your tax burden. That's tax avoidance. The term simply means not paying tax you don't legally owe.

So if you are PAYE and on the correct tax code, you are not avoiding tax?

Most people will be on the correct tax code at the start of each tax year if still with the same employer, it's only if you start a new job you might be wrong, or income gone up through the next barrier for higher tax, which will be a small percentage IMO.

 

[Bobbins]

So if you are PAYE and on the correct tax code, you are not avoiding tax?

Most people will be on the correct tax code at the start of each tax year if still with the same employer, it's only if you start a new job you might be wrong, or income gone up through the next barrier for higher tax, which will be a small percentage IMO.

Yes, obviously. And if you're on the wrong code you get it changed and you pay less tax. That's tax avoidance. It's what everyone does whether they know it or not. It's also when you shop in duty-free, or own a business and use dividend payments alongside a salary, or when someone gets tax relief on pension contributions. Or any of a hundred other things.

All it involves is making sure you don't pay more tax than you owe.

As I said, there are some "morally questionable" avoidance schemes run by accountants, but they're rare and usually caught out, and the law changed to make sure it doesn't happen again.

One problem of course is that generally the people who write tax laws are less bright than those whose job it is to make sure their clients pay as little tax as possible.

 

[thekneaf]

You avoid tax every time you get paid, as I said. Being PAYE doesn't mean a thing. If your employer had you on the wrong tax code, like a lot of people are on their first month or two of pay, you would correct them so that you paid the correct amount of tax, which would reduce your tax burden. That's tax avoidance. The term simply means not paying tax you don't legally owe.

As Dinghy has already pointed out, if you've ever paid someone cash for a job (and I don't believe for one second you've NEVER paid cash in hand for anything in your life), if you've ever bought something privately, if you've ever owned a business and made sure you only pay what you owe, then you've taken part in tax avoidance.

Joe Lewis doesn't use "loopholes in the system". He is a tax exile, meaning he has built his entire financial life around not paying any tax in the country of his birth by not living there or having any of his companies registered there. There's nothing we can do about this while certain countries act as tax havens. It is all perfectly legal, however much we might disagree with it.

There's a reason that the terms avoidance and evasion are legally different - one is legal and the other simply isn't. It's an important distinction because by talking about tax avoidance in the same terms as evasion is a dangerous lumping-together of very different cases and effectively assumes that millions of people across the country are engaged in criminal activity.

Every business owner in the country makes an effort to minimise their tax bill. That is not illegal and not morally wrong. The only cases of tax avoidance that are dodgy are those which are using clever tax schemes to hide their true tax burden (such as the celeb offshoring schemes which came out a few years ago).

Oh and HMRC has more staff than ever before - they have massively increased their numbers of inspection and data officers over the last 5-10 years.

Asking for a cash price is different to paying in cash. Please

 

[TheRevolution]

But people live within their means, so someone taking a 60% decrease will probably mean bills might not get paid.

Say for example person 1 is on 2k a month, person 2 is on 6k a month.

So person 1 has outgoing of 1.5k a month and person 2 has outgoing of 5k a month. Say each take a 20% decrease it's the one earning 6k a month that hits financial problems first.

It's easy to sit and criticize people on higher wages for not doing their part, but we don't know their financial situation and people on lower wages than you might look at you and think you could do more.

We're talking about people on substantially higher wages and if their lifestyle prevents them from taking a pay cut then that is exactly how capitalism has failed us.

 

[pelayo59]

The higher ups at the club haven't done enough imo. Levy, Donna-Maria Cullen and the other club directors should have taken a bigger salary cut to save the rest of the staff. Lets be real here, a 20% pay cut for the directors still leaves them paid very handsomely. Heck, a 60% pay cut and they would still be on alot more money than I ever got working full time.

Capitalism has failed society during this pandemic and we are an example of that.

They are earning max 2500£ per month?

 

[thekneaf]

Asking for a cash price is different to paying in cash. Please

@Bobbins not sure why that's funny. I'm assuming you're meaning a nudge wink what's the price if I pay you cash transaction.

 

[we_all_loved_freund]

The payments from HMRC under the furlough rules are grants to companies not loans, and therefore are not repayable. They are treated as income to the company and normal tax treatment applies.

Are you making this up or can you point me to the government guidance that says it will be treated as income for the company? I very much doubt that would be the case. Having recently furloughed nearly 2000 of our employees, if the reclaimed wages are going to be counted as income, we'll have to lay them all off again and go back to paying them the statutory guarantee payment; the corporation tax on such income would make it unfeasible .

 

[we_all_loved_freund]

Are the club applying the government cap of £2,500pm to the reduction? My reading of the statement is that all non-playing staff are taking a 20% reduction but there is no mention that this will be limited to the £2,500pm. It seems to me that the club are topping up the government grant to ensure that the staff get the full 80% of their salary (I would imagine 80% of most employee's salary amounts to more than £2,500).

In reality, when you take off your travel costs and other incidentals in respect of getting to/being at work (coffees, lunch, parking etc), most people will probably come out even. In addition, the employees would likely be free to go and get another job if they wish, which would probably mean that they will be earning more than they would had they not been furloughed.

As to whether a football club should rely upon a government scheme to reimburse staff costs during a time when their industry is one of the hardest hit, I have no issue with it at all. Is the same criticism being leveled at big corporations who take billions in profit out of the country every year (I know for a fact that such organisations have furloughed thousands of workers)?

Football clubs are an easy target because they conduct their business in the public eye.

 

[DFF]

I can't bring myself to be that bothered by this when reportedly 50% of businesses, some of which are far bigger and richer than us, will be using this scheme. It was put in place for businesses and businesses will use it, big or small. Otherwise the government should have put restrictions in place.

Will people boycott BA, Costa Coffee, Pret, McDonalds, etc. when this is all over. I doubt it. The trouble is people view THFC as something different from these other businesses, when in fact we are not. This is something Liverpool fans found out this week after years of deluding themselves with "this means more" bollocks. The difference is their club was pressured into a reversal so they can delude themselves a little longer.

 

[Doctor Dinkey]

I can't bring myself to be that bothered by this when reportedly 50% of businesses, some of which are far bigger and richer than us, will be using this scheme. It was put in place for businesses and businesses will use it, big or small. Otherwise the government should have put restrictions in place.

Will people boycott BA, Costa Coffee, Pret, McDonalds, etc. when this is all over. I doubt it. The trouble is people view THFC as something different from these other businesses, when in fact we are not. This is something Liverpool fans found out this week after years of deluding themselves with "this means more" bollocks. The difference is their club was pressured into a reversal so they can delude themselves a little longer.

Well that's a pretty cynical view. We ARE different from those companies you referred to; the club is immersed in community and local identity, and many people invest emotionally in it very deeply. If we are the same as Costa,etc, we may as well be supporting a property management/ sports entertainment company with a football club tacked on. We are different, and fans should expect different moral standards that show respect to the community we're part of.

 

[joelstinton14]

I do think if there if no real endgame in place in two - three weeks time we will see a majority of premier league clubs furlough or even worse lay off staff. Especially those who got promoted this year or battle relegation. The amount of money those clubs have spent to get to the Premier League is actually quite frightening.

Listening to the athletic podcast earlier, it seems championship clubs are the ones that are going to suffer the most. Over half of the sides in last year championship were spending more on wages than they had money coming in. Not sure if I heard right but Villa and Sheff Utd spent almost 200% of their income on wages, as in they were spending £2 for every £1 earnt. Mental.