if leeds get the 50,000 back from the wcc and give the money to the players,as they were going to do.wont that take us over the cap?

I think the players should also be punished as they have accepted off the books payments, unless they expect people to believe that they thought getting a pay cheque and a brown envelope was just normal.

Bonuses not part of the cap.

Really?

I bet a lot of 'bonuses' get put through.

The general gist on here more than suggests there are ample ways to put things through.

Makes you wonder how daft some clubs are to get pulled up for it.

No, any prize money does not count on the cap. It would defeat the point of having prize money if you you could not give some or all of it to the players. The club can choose to do whatever it likes with prize money under the cap rules, so it can give every penny of it to it's players if it wants. It suspected that the majority of the prize money from our last 3 grand finals went into giving players bonuses payments because the club can afford to do so.

He means prize money does not count on the cap.

That'll be for the Australian tax and criminal authorities to look at and decide whether any criminal charges need to be laid against the club, its directors or individuals concerned.

You can't hold the players responsible for their employer's decision to try and cheat the salary cap.

I think that if my employer suggested that I receive half my wage in the normal way with a payslip, and the other half paid in cash with no questions, or paid to my wife with no questions asked, or if I received a contract of employment that only mentioned half of my salary on it with a separate letter confirming that the other half would be paid by other means and I was not to tell anyone about it - I'd start to wonder who the hell I was working for.



Mind - it has happened

of course you can! the players were on the take! They should have blown the whistle at first indication. Any point after that they are guilty by involvement, profiting and association. they are most guilty of conspircy to cheat the cap which has to be 100% against the spirit of the cap! I would imagine the Aussie authorities will think they are responsible.

So your employer comes along to you tomorrow and offers to pay you half your salary in cash to cut down on their PAYE bill.

You're going to go running to HMRC to tell them all about it straight away are you?

Well yes and no!

There are a couple of things, did some players know they were getting paid extra via a third party route? This would seem likely as it appears from the news so far that this second set of books was alongside a set of top-up signed contracts! Hard to defend that you did not know that this might break the operation rules of the NRL when you signed a second contract, unless of course the CEO is very, very clever! So if knowingly taking payments they are probably in breach of the organisational rules and therefore the NRL probably have the power to suspended or stop players from playing RL in future.

In respect of tax or a crime been committed, it is quite possible that players were not breaking any law and if they paid the correct tax on the extra money they were paid, then in that respect they could be in the clear... but again, is this case?

I suspect that there is much more to come out of this story yet and I suspect that players will be suspended and banned if the NRL can indeed prove that they knowingly broke the rules of the sport. I also suspect that maybe the NRL will let the tax and criminal authorities do there investigation first, so as to get the total picture before deciding on it's actions and of course more evidence will be made available from these investigations.

any individuals involved should be heavily punished and that includes players or coaches guilty of tax evasion with some maybe jailed
a lot of players will have agents that handle all their cash issues and its doubtful most knew exactly how much they got paid but the managment of the club must have known

if the coaching staff were found to be involved in the organisation of these underground payments then they should be facing long bans