Salary cap? What salary cap?

[Cardiff Tig]

I would suggest that the auditor would be more likely to notice the incredibly low sponsorship cost that the club has received rather than the relatively low salary of a player. Out of interest do the clubs have to give details of how much individual players are paid? Or just the collective?

[jgriffin]

My other concern is the accumulation of assets that could be cashed in, selling players to recoup suppposed investment (rent), like in Wendyball. IMO rugby currently lies just outside this version of the smelly brown river.

[h's dad]

Interesting if not wholly reassuring:

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/ ... -1-3672261

[Dave Angel]

I would suggest that the auditor would be more likely to notice the incredibly low sponsorship cost that the club has received rather than the relatively low salary of a player. Out of interest do the clubs have to give details of how much individual players are paid? Or just the collective?

Copies of all player contracts have to be sent to PRL so yes, clubs do have to give them details of individual player salaries & not just the club's aggregate wage bill.

[biffer]

If you want something else to slag Sarries off about, this Sunday they're insisting on playing in their black and red kit against Edinburgh. Edinburgh's home kit is black, away kit is red, so they've had to have another, different kit done just for this game. General opinion amongst the Edinburgh fans is that Sarries wouldn't change to their grey kit because Edinburgh said they wouldn't play this game in Cape Town. Minor but petty.

[mol2]

Player gets a contract with the club for say £100k. Player arranges personal sponsorship with Sponsor for £200k. The fact that that same sponsor insists that the deal is dependent on playing for club and mysteriously get cheap, prominent advertising at the club by a grateful club.

But wouldn't that be fairly obvious to any credible auditor? If, say, a recently retired RSA captain was listed as earning £100K at Saracens and was paid additional salaries through sponsor(s) then would any auditor worth his salt really believe that retired RSA captain would sign to play for £100K? All the other income(s) would be invisible to the salary cap auditor.

If we really believe that is the extent of the salary cap audit, then they may as well save the money of the auditor. An auditors job is to scrutinise, ask questions when things look strange, rationalise salaries, look at fringe benefits etc.

By the way, I have no idea what a recently retired RSA captain is paid, I was using him as an example.

The auditor would see the accounts. The salary is the salary as far as they are concerned and their role is to make sure the accounts stack up as far as the Inland Revenue is concerned. Players' individual deals with sponsor companies won't show up in the club accounts.
The sponsor's accounts will show a payment to a PR or marketing company, again all above board as far as the tax man is concerned. The Rugby authorities have no legal powers to make a sponsor company or anyone else explain themselves or to whom the money is really going to.

[Dave Angel]

The auditors who audit the salary cap are different to the auditors who do the statutory audits of the various clubs.

The latter are appointed by the clubs themselves, the former are appointed by PRL and they both look at different sources of information for their different audit requirements.

The salary cap auditors will do far more than look at the company accounts in the same way that an HMRC inspector looks at far more than just a Tax Return.

[mol2]

And if, for example my company decided to sponsor Castro, just how would the salary cap auditors get to see that?

The league's auditors can't look at my books and even if I let them or they got to see them by other means they would have no way of proving the sponsorship by my company was in lieu of salary from Tigers. That's assuming the payment was direct to the player. If the payment went to "Lardy Promotions" in Jersey, then how on earth could they argue, let alone prove that my 50p sponsorship had tipped Tigers over the salary cap?

The players' income tax affairs are between him and the Inland Revenue, and or wherever he is domiciled for tax purposes.
His salary from Tigers may be on PAYE but sponsorship and promotional earnings will be dealt with through more tax efficient methods.

[h's dad]

Player gets a contract with the club for say £100k. Player arranges personal sponsorship with Sponsor for £200k. The fact that that same sponsor insists that the deal is dependent on playing for club and mysteriously get cheap, prominent advertising at the club by a grateful club.

But wouldn't that be fairly obvious to any credible auditor? If, say, a recently retired RSA captain was listed as earning £100K at Saracens and was paid additional salaries through sponsor(s) then would any auditor worth his salt really believe that retired RSA captain would sign to play for £100K? All the other income(s) would be invisible to the salary cap auditor.

If we really believe that is the extent of the salary cap audit, then they may as well save the money of the auditor. An auditors job is to scrutinise, ask questions when things look strange, rationalise salaries, look at fringe benefits etc.

By the way, I have no idea what a recently retired RSA captain is paid, I was using him as an example.

I don't think your 50p would constitute a material breach. It's got to be a bigger number to be worth doing and bigger numbers would be easier to identify. You can start off by looking at packages and seeing if they are reasonable and carry on digging from there.

There are all sorts of official and unofficial sources that can be used including the rumours that we hear being weighed and sifted.

Any breach doesn't have to be picked up at the time and if it comes to light later retrospective action can be taken as in the NRL. Also senior officials are putting their professional reputations on the line.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's not as easy to hide, especially in the long term, as some seem to think it is.

[Iain]

This week's Crumbie Podcast mentioned three clubs have fallen foul of being found to be over the salary cap and been fined for it. No indication as to who.... but you could understand a conclusion being drawn that we were one of them with the strength of our squad.

[drc_007]

This week's Crumbie Podcast mentioned three clubs have fallen foul of being found to be over the salary cap and been fined for it. No indication as to who.... but you could understand a conclusion being drawn that we were one of them with the strength of our squad.

This is part of the problem, by keeping everything behind closed doors people assume the worse.