New figures show that HMRC is ramping up investigations into footballers, agents and football clubs. In particular, the number of investigations into footballers has tripled in the year to March 2020. The main areas of focus are payments made for players' image rights and the tax treatment of agents' fees.
Even by the standards of tax cases, the recent case of BlueCrest Capital Management Cayman Ltd & others v HMRC is a difficult read. However, it is worth persevering with, because HMRC has taken the opportunity to test out a number of theories on partnership taxation, with some fairly alarming results for taxpayers.
Loosening up access to information.