IAIN AD Mann considers employee benefit trusts (EBTs) "a serious abuse of the UK tax system".
In some cases, the way that these EBTs are administered would seem to uphold this view, though in the Rangers case it has been found that the scheme was run correctly, albeit HMRC are to appeal.
The Rangers case was indeed a test case and HMRC has much bigger football fish to fry south of the Border, not to mention large companies outwith football.
There is to my mind nothing bizarre in the reasoning of one of the judges to find in favour of Rangers by saying that none of the loans had ever been repaid, as this is one major test of the EBT validity.
Perhaps rather than appealing the Rangers decision, HMRC would be better rewarded by lobbying this dysfunctional Coalition Government to tighten the law on multinationals that allows them to reduce their corporation tax payments to a fraction of what they should be paying.
Now that is a serious abuse of the UK tax system.
James T Martin,
43 Thomson Drive,
Glasgow.
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