SL clubs cannot register new contracts with image rights, as I understand it - at least until the High Court test case is heard. But that is the CLUB paying part of the package as image rights (something Wire were allegedly big big proponents of) as a way of avoiding (or, according to HMRC, evading) tax and NIC and so getting much more bang for your salary cap bucks. Invariably by paying the player's offshore personal services company registered in a tax haven, so non-dom overseas players escaped UK tax on these earnings altogether.

Nothing to stop a player or his agent agreeing a totally unconnected deal to sell his image rights to a totally unconnected third party, though.

And if the player is a non-don - as virtually all overseas players are - then if that image rights income is "earned" overseas, and is not remitted to the UK, then the player is not subject to UK tax in any way. The HMRC actions are aimed at substitution of UK earnings for image rights paid by by the same club. Different issue.

Various other tax loopholes for UK earning substitution - like employee benefit trusts - have been closed, and HMRC are taking a hard (and IMO very unreasonable) similar line on pension contributions. But these are all club-related issues. In the example I quoted, neither the club nor the owner is involved...so all parties will swear to at least...

Have the club made a concious decision to avoid using this kind of wheeze for fear of it coming back to haunt them? If HRMRC decide certain ways of doing this are ok will we belatedly jump on the bandwagon? It seems we're losing out at the moment.

bit academic if we dont have any extra money available to make any payments outside salary cap anyway isnt it?

We did jump on the bandwagon though, if I understood it correctly - one we know of went by the name of Harris. And we all learnt about the meaning of "unconnected" there, did we not? Oddly enough, when (for example) Saints had a senior player whose image rights were presumably sold by him to Gillette, no such issues arose.

I suspect the problem is finding a player who has mysteriously stacked up an unconnected image rights deal and at the same time is minded to play for much less than market value? Maybe some other clubs have somehow...struck lucky, and found such players?

Or, maybe there are players out there who are genuinely prepared to play for a lower salary because they think so much of the club they are playing for?

It has to be something like that, surely?

Not academic, just not relevant - since the third party has to be "unconnected" anyway to avoid the payments being caught by the cap. The salary cap rules cover all payments made by the club or connected parties.

I've never been entirely clear on whether a club finding an "independent third party"
and putting him in touch with the player counts still as "unconnected"?