pedg

It's only a PL thing so not something anyone owning pompey will have to worry about for a long time.

Door, stable, bolted, after. http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11095_6293446,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8839169.stm quote from the pompey QC So basically mimicking a lot of there fans i.e. not taking into the account the bigger picture (i.e. lost 6M on pompey and gain many more millions from image right taxation). Don't know why HMRC don't just come back in the morning and say 'We are aware we may get less from pompey if we win this appeal but we want to stop these tax evasion techniques that are widespread amongst other football clubs for the greater long term good'.

Can't help but think that AA missed a trick here. It sounds like the amount he discounted from HMRC consisted of tax on the image rights and these trusts. If he has held his hand up and said 'yes the previous management did cheat on the image rights and I will accept that figure but I will not accept the figure for the trusts' he would still have won the CVA vote and would be in a much stronger position in this appeal. If it just comes down to this (ignoring all the other things the judge could find against pompey on) and the judge agrees that tax was liable on the image rights but he decides its not proven for the trusts could the judge say. 'After my judgement the HMRC would still not have had enough to block the CVA so I consider it valid' or does any 'win' for HMRC force AA to come back with a new CVA?

Given that a) HMRC have followed the rules in issuing the assessment (even if it is proven eventually to be wrong it was correctly issued) and b) AA did not follow the rules when disallowing it surely its going to be very hard to get out of that one. The fact that the assessment is for image rights is irrelevant, it should be the same as if it was a bill for bad hair tax as far as the court is concerned w.r.t. it being disallowed against the rules.

Plus we still have AA having to be cross examined about why he chose to ignore a share of HMRC debt without explaining why & Lampitt explaining what he meant in the meeting with fan's when he said something along the lines of "and HMRC are also massaging their figures"

Adjourned, second half kicks off tomorrow at 10am

Suspect HMRC telling judge he should not use the wimbledon case as a precedent so he will be checking to make sure that is the case.

From the news:

Question for the legal bods on here that know more about it. Is it likely that after all this introductions we will have witnesses called, etc. Hoping that AA will be given the chance to see if he can fit both feet in his mouth!

The answer is we don't know. I believe HMRC said that taking the image rights into account they are owed 30M. I don't think that figure included anything to do with these trusts. Maybe that is where the extra 4M to take them up to the 34M they claimed at the CVA comes from? Assuming nothing else changes 30M would not be over 25%.

insightful reporting from the news as ever. Really keeping us up to date with the courtroom cut and thrust

But the TV money comes in via the PL not direct from foreign TV so as far as the club us concerned it is domestic income.

Did any of the pompey players actually ever receive a normal taxed salary??

Anyone have an idea who mr hatt is: http://twitter.com/DanKing_NOTW Witness statement from Mr Hat(t) in Pompey case. Isn't he in South Park? Look forward to Mr Hanky's appearance.

I assume that though that may get a high earner off the payroll it does mean another player leaving with no money coming in for them.

AA is there!!.. From Dan Roan twitter "Afternoon session starts. Andronikou arrives at High Court - Gregory Mitchell QC says he'll finish argument for HMRC by 1530."

Still got 1.5 days of court action to get through yet.

What's confusing me here a bit is how the 30M figure from HMRC fits in with the total they claimed at the CVA meeting, which was higher (was it about 35?).

I don't think so as this refers to 2006 to date so only 4 years which, if all the 30M was image rights tax mean that the total image rights bill in that time would have been £75M.

News write up of this mornings events in court: http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Pompey-operated-a-tax-sham.6453877.jp

Not yet but we do know Thursday is now the new Friday (or something like that).

If it gets down to a few fractions of a percent how much of the total owed is overdue image right's payments to players such as Sol Campbell as surely they should all go down to 60% of their current level on the grounds that 40% should be going in tax? i.e. rather than the club owing someone £1M in image right payments if HMRC win the point it would then be 600K owed to player and 400K to hmrc?

Resuming at 2pm apparently.

I see they have already started a memorial a the likely site of the clubs death http://twitpic.com/2b8aje