IR35 and football players?

[croggywhite]

Being a newbie, this may not be the correct forum to submit this to (so flame away), but my 2 questions on IR35 (and very useful answers) made me think as to whether IR35 affects footballers, well at least those who haven't moved to Spain!

Are there not similarities in:
- Often have limited companies with only 1 income 'product'
- Work via agents
- Have fixed period contracts, often extended
- Use the client's equipment (pitch, training facilities, team coach, physio) [are these taxable benefits??]
- Cannot have a substitution clause as they are the only player on the contract
- Get paid even when not playing either through injury or suspension.

Don't tell me that Frank Lampard uses an umbrella company - if so, which one!!!

If this is true, wouldn't the Revenue be better chasing the £80,000 per week rather than us?

[xoggoth]

Unanswerable. Query is based on false premise that there is some sort of logic behind tax collection and that those responsible are human beings rather than hellish creatures from an unspeakably evil dimension far removed from our own for which the known universe holds no laws.

[tim123]

Footballers have two sources of income.

Their salary from the team that they play for.

And income from personal appearances at events, book signings etc

the former is paid to them via PAYE (as this is mandated by the football authorities) and has tax and NI deducted at source.

The latter is (usually) collected via a Ltd company and they have no problem whatsoever showing that this is genuine use of a company.

HTH

tim