thought you'd be out sticking up for Levein

I said yesterday that we needed to win last night and if we didnt win, Levein was due the criticism.

We didnt win....2 points from two home games is not good enough.

Dont believe it was all down to Levein's team selection and tactics.....fans at Hampden basically waiting for a chance to boo didnt help the team at all, and some individual players should have done better.....but at the end of the day, the buck stops with the gaffer, and we've just not been good enough to get wins in two matches we really should be getting more than two points from if we want to qualify

Dont believe it was all down to Levein's team selection and tactics...
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Stevie when he took off our main striker and put on a defensive midfielder when we were crying out for another striker to be played up top that was it for me.

I am a glass half full type of supporter but that selection and the omission of some players from the squad - like Commons - over Morrison who was rank on Saturday and worse last night, suggests to me he is not the guy to take this reasonably good group of players to a major final.

Nail on the head.....this whole thing would not be an issue if the SFA/SPL did their job in the first place and not conduct an investigation, 10 years down the line
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Steve wrt the OP the information was requested for the season 11-12 last year.

"Johnston said Rangers had acceded to SFA requests for information about the scheme.
"The SFA compliance officers must have known, both from the description and context of the reports, that such expenditures had some connection to player compensation," he said.
"However, without any further investigation at the time, Rangers FC received its SFA license to compete in the 2011/2012 season"

Not ten years ago. The powers that be clearly wanted to understand the methodologies of rangers payments and had asked for more information. What is interesting is that Johnston admits that player compensation was tied to these payment methods and outside that of normal payments made. Now if this is in the contract with the SFA no issue - if not, problem.

Takfa

"Not ten years ago."

""However, without any further investigation at the time, Rangers FC received its SFA license to compete in the 2011/2012 season"

How long had we been using EBTs for??....and questions were being asked before the start of the 11/12 season about a scheme Rangers had in place for how long???

Is that not what this says???
In 2011, the SFA were either just stating to or were still asking questions about a payment scheme Rangers had in operation since when???....and had granted Rangers a licence to compete every season throughout that period??

You tell me mate....if the SFA had asked questions about this back in say, I dunno, 2004 or soemthing if not earlier....are you seriously suggesting that if Rangers hadnt complied with the SFA's request, and not given them all the information they asked forso they could look ingo this properly, they would've granted Rangers a licence for a furhter 7 years before being finally getting that information???

I dont think so somehow, and if that is indeed what happened...the SFA are bumbling idiots

the SFA are bumbling idiots
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Not arguing this point

You have to however look as to when they had to investigate. I mean the process of contract registration isnt rocket science.

Club agrees deal with player. player signs contract. Club secretary supplies all new contracts to SFA for registration on yearly basis.

Every club in Scotland does this. You can not expect hundreds of contracts to be scrutinised on a yearly basis and then questioned with the relative clubs.

Yes at the time of the EBT / tax case investigation they should have started to look into this. That I agree.

Tafka - we almost agree on this.

Only point I would say is that of course every registration should be examined. Better to catch problems at the time than this fiasco a decade later.

And given that every set of Rangers accounts mentioned EBTs - surely SOMEONE in the SPL / SFA would read that & think "hmm, that is not the same as most accounts we get in - what are EBTs exactly?"

I would have thought that the time to ask would be the very first time the term EBT appeared in Rangers accounts.

Is the issue not the EBTs per se, but the fact that players did not pay tax on payments related to football?

The SFA may not necessarily have to have known the tax side of it? Or they never asked ;

It would be interesting to see what the wording of the players contracts was, because in my experience many types of contracts leave a bit of wriggle room with regards to bonus and other discretionary payments.

I think that's the crux, man with stick. HMRC said they were going after 'individuals'. Everybody assumes this will be on a corporate level, but could they also be referring to ex-players?

HMRC are only interested in the tax treatment of the EBTs.

SPL are saying that the EBTs were not loans, but in fact contractual payments i.e. wages, not disclosed in players' contracts.

Even HMRC say the EBTs are loans. So have the SPL (up to now), the SFA, the SFL etc.

"The SFA may not necessarily have to have known the tax side of it?"

When it comes to the SFA/SPL, the tax side of things was also irrelevant.

What was relevant and what this whole investigation is about is players getting sums of money through a trust that "apparently" wasntt declared, wasnt included in the contracts, or was handled in side contracts that the SFA didnt see.

As "apparently" all details of the contracts the players had with the club with regards to regular payments for footballing duties were not disclosed, this made player registration null and void.

Any numpty can see, just by looking at Rangers annual accounts, that in the notes to the accounts under the heading staff costs, there is firstly a line that says Wages and Salaries, and then there is a line that says Contributions to Employee Trusts

Here is the 2005 accounts to see for yourself
www.rangers.premiumtv.co.uk/staticFiles/ea/c/0,,5~3306,00.pdf

The wages and salaries figure that year was almost £18m, and then there was an additional £7.2m contributed to employee trusts.

Do people honestly expect us bears to believe that no-one.....no-one at the SPL or SFA, over a period of ten years, asked a single question about what this £7m figure was all about....coz its hardly a pittance, and there is even a note below this information to say this:

"The Rangers Employee Benefit Trust and Murray Group Management Ltd. Remuneration Trust were established to provide incentives to certain employees and other service providers. Payments to these Trusts are charged to the Group Profit and Loss Account in the year incurred."

....now doesnt that shout "BONUS" to anyone, and with the figure being as high as £7m, would that not possibly mean player bonuses or SOMETHING????

Come on tae fck like ye know

That is correct st3vie, but it is not outwith the realms of possibility that the SFA/SPL did turn a blind eye.

Somebody has, if it transpires that it was not 'fully declared'.

The whole thing centres on whether the SPL can prove that these loans were in fact topups for salaries relating directly to footballing duties.

As it stands they are nothing more than an employee benefit.

Unless the SPL has some kind of documentary evidence ie something in writing between Rangers and a player specifying that these monies were compensation for footballing duties then there is no case to answer.

If Rangers are found guilty, then the players involved would have their registrations voided. This would not only forfeit Rangers games at that time, but since registrations are with UEFA and FIFA, surely this would void any Scotland games that Rangers players took part in as well.

"Somebody has, if it transpires that it was not 'fully declared'."

Well if that is the case.....then the question has to be asked....who's fault is that???

The whole issue surrounds the second contracts thing I suppose, and if these things do exist, then Rangers didnt declare it.

If they dont though, and there is no actual piece of paper that says "you will receive x amount via EBT".....then surely all that had to be declared was declared....you would think??

I dunno...its a pure mess.

My standing has always been...if the tax case finds us guilty, we had second contracts and used EBTs to top -up wages, that then means wages werent declared and we broke tax and possibly SFA/SPL rules.

If the tax case finds in our favour....we gave players tax free loans in the correct manner that EBTs were intended to be used, or within the rules set out for them at least, and there was nothing else to declare.

I still find it hard to believe how the SPL/SFA can process an investigation and find either way themselves if we have done wrong or not without the tax case findings being known first.

If its wages, how we declared them is the issue
If its loans...its not wages

The duty is on rangers to comply with the SPL rules not the other way round.

spot on St3vie.

They're just making themselves look daft. If it's ruled that we didn't break tax laws then that will basically mean they couldn't prove that these loans were salary topups. If the courts can't prove that, what makes the SPL think they can.

This is just certain parties within the SPL looking for something else to beat rangers with.

If it's proven we broke tax laws, and I don't doubt for a minute this was a tax dodge (but that doesn't make it illegal unless you can prove it) then fair enough we'll take our medicine, but until the courts have ruled I don't understand what the SPL thinks it can achieve.

"The duty is on rangers to comply with the SPL rules not the other way round."

The duty is on the authorities to apply those rules dilligently, and not let one of their biggest and most influential members flaunt those rules for 10 years before noticing and doing something about it....if that is indeed what has happened

Thats the most galling thing about all of this if it turns out rules were broken....if the authorities cant notice something like this going on......for that length of time.....how can they actually be trusted to run the game competently and efficiently??

Simple rangers kept it hidden.

Rangers knew the rules and, it appears, deliberately broke them.

Hidden? Hidden how exactly. I mean short of putting yellow highlighter around every set of accounts where the EBTs are mentioned and the details of the Trusts advised, what more should Ranger have done to make it clear that EBTs were being used?

"Simple rangers kept it hidden. "

Whatever you say....they kept it hidden by publishing their accounts with sums as high as nearly half of the total wage bill being paid into an employee benefit trust being used "to provide incentives to certain employees".

Aye nae bother...they hid that awfy well like....so well a 2 second google search can find those documents

Get the specs aff mate

"The duty is on rangers to comply with the SPL rules not the other way round."
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As far as Rangers are concerned they did adhere to the rules.

It is up to the SPL to prove otherwise.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that. It is up to the accuser to prove guilt, not the accused to prove innocence.

That is correct st3vie, but it is not outwith the realms of possibility that the SFA/SPL did turn a blind eye.

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Turned a blind eye to what. Giving players legal tax free loans. Loans are loans, not dual contracts (SPL stopped using this term) or side contracts they are loans used by other compnaies.

It's utter bullocks.

Did rangers declare why they were using the ebt's, though?

"Did rangers declare why they were using the ebt's, though?"

The Rangers Employee Benefit Trust and Murray Group Management Ltd. Remuneration Trust were established to provide incentives to certain employees and other service providers.

This was written in every set of end of year accounts since the use of EBTs started