[St Charles Owl]

My mistake: it's The Murray Group that has The right of appeal and not BDO.

From what I have read it is the liquidators who may have the right to appeal against this decision as they are technically in charge of what is left of the Murray Group.

Either way Larry's question as to who is actually liable for the tax money is an interesting one.  Technically as these employees were using PAYE for their tax, then it is the company's responsibility to deduct and pay the tax on the employees behalf based on the individuals tax code.  If they were self employed, then it would be the individuals responsibility to declare these payments on their tax return.  I am no tax expert at all but I think the onus is on the liquidators to pay the tax as they hold the cash they were able to salvage from the  companies involved who should have paid it in the first instance but I also wonder if there is a mechanism for BDO to go after the individuals to claim back the tax portion of their pay that they now illegally received!!!!

Either way its a mess and hindsight has proved what a stupid and high risk strategy this was for Rangers (and 5,000 other companies!!) to use as a way of avoiding taxes.  As it said on one article I read today, this whole scheme was so close to the wire even if it was legal that it would raise some serious eyebrows from the tax man and the general public alike!!

As for the sporting advantage, I am not sure how you could prove or disprove this.  Unless Barry Ferguson or any of the other 40% of Rangers players on this scheme were to categorically state that they would not have joined Rangers unless this tax benefit was there, then its pure speculation to suggest they gained a sporting advantage.  Ultimately Ranger could afford to pay them enough to allow their take home income to be at the same level but chose to offer this tax scheme which saved the club some money instead.  The totals over a 10 year period only amounted to 47m and this included a number of non-playing staff including Murray himself, so I would guess that the "sporting" aspect of this only amounted to 2-3m per season anyway and that is hardly likely to be enough to provide a sporting advantage to the degree that some are claiming.