BlueThunder

£60? I've been overpaying....

Thanks. That reads remarkably different from 'Whyte steals £9m from taxman' though doesn't it? Every paper, radio interview etc is bursting with pundits and callers criticizing the theft of this £9m yet no-one is pulling them up about it.

The thing is, even if he is doing this for us and not just trying to make himself a fast buck he is stomping over numerous creditors who have done nothing wrong other than trade with Rangers. Surely this is not the type of saviour we want? Ok, if it is that or go to the wall then fine, but you know what I'm saying....

Yeah, can someone please clarify whether the £9m is the small bill which we are still contesting plus PAYE we owe, or is it simply the PAYE? I read somewhere that we offered to pay the PAYE but HMRC refused yet the media (or was it the administrators?) are saying that Whyte deliberately witheld £9m from HMRC to run the company. I ask simply because a few months ago people were saying Whyte was quite right to challenge every bill we received, including the small bill's penalties, yet now many are saying why didn't we just pay tax we owed.

As Boss said, "what makes me wonder that it isn't is the existence of the £9m PAYE/VAT, which makes it harder to achieve >75%" This is the interesting part. It either means that building the debt so HMRC <25% wasn't his plan or that the debt is far bigger than we anticipate! A lot of talk today about possible action against Whyte and Rangers being taken from him and possible legal action. I'm sure there are many more developments to come in the next few days. Oh, and when is this supposed Texan saviour arriving!

Turn? What, for him? They've been against him since the get go, pretty much.

I agree, but I thought the whole penalties thing is because we didn't pay up in a timely fashion about a case we knew about. However, the small £4m case (not to be confused with the £9m case. Confused?) gathered penalties because of late payment that we knew nothing about so perhaps you are right about the big one.

Interesting. However, surely the player would have to sanction it. Radio Snyde were suggesting earlier that any of our players including McGregor could be bought by Celtic (ha!) if they reach an agreement with the admin but conveniently forgot to mention that the individual has a say in where they go. I doubt Lee would go back to Hearts, especially with their troubles.

Casey, I do understand what you are saying. My point was merely that we could have spent the same amount of money and not been in this predicament, so it isn't the amount of money itself. We spent a certain amount, regardless of EBTs. The EBTs caused the issue not the spend. And NO-ONE is allowed to make jokes about Rangers, ever. Unless they pay the standard £100 Rangers joke fee. Two for £150.

Have a rep for your honesty!

But that is missing the point. We used those EBTs because we thought we could and that we were not liable. I don't care how much people hate Murray/Bain do you honestly think they knew this bill was coming? They thought they'd get away with it, as did other clubs by the sound of it. They didn't say 'aye, we'll be well shot of Rangers by the time it comes around'. If the EBTs hadn't been available there would STILL have been multi-million pound transfers and for the same outlay. This situation wasn't caused by us spending too much PER SE, but by us using a work-around that later got us into bother. We could have spent THE SAME amount of money and not have been in deep doo-doo. Yet the general feeling going by my friends down here in London (and Mr Walker) is that that overspending caused this situation. I don't know about you, but a debt of around £20m at the start of the season seemed quite reasonable compared to the £200m or so that Man Utd have.

You didn't understand my point. People who don't support the club are being fed the whole 'Rangers bought success by overspending' line. They now think we've racked up a huge debt which we still have (leave Whyte out of this) and had to go into admin rather than knowing it was caused by a gargantuan eff up by Murray, Bain et al (which we actually still might not have to pay for). Also, it has been posted that this £9m PAYE bill could be paid as late as the end of March. However, I somehow don't think Dan Walker was referring to this bill.

I agree, but what annoys me is this lazy idea that our spending has caused this. The issue is the possible abuse of the EBT scheme, and Craig Whyte's plan to take us into admin/liquidation (unless there was a huge effin debt hidden by Whyte when he took over!). However if you read forums, listen to radio shows, read BBC tweets the issue is always about us overspending and buying Flo for £12m etc etc. Take away the EBT case prior to recent events and we'd have been in an ok position.

For redemption he'd need to:- -Get us out of this without liquidation and with the HMRC case dead -Explain what the hell Ellis is doing on the board -Sing the sash at halftime during the next Celtic match -Tell me who the girl is in SimpleyTheBestest's avatar, and provide her number

Combine with the unpublished accounts and we have......

I asked about this earlier. At the time I thought it was a Tim having a laugh in case we went under, or someone speculating in order to possibly sell the names later (there were a few). Now I wonder if they were bought the Whyte gang with all by of this in mind!

It would be a sad day for me, but I wouldn't feel the same as you. There would still be a Rangers, but not the one we knew. Maybe a better one. Who knows. I wouldn't buy into the Sellik driven stuff of us having zero history and trophies. They spout that because it is the only way they will ever overtake us.

Rangers as we know them would be dead. The 140 year old company would cease to trade. If that doesn't bother you then why don't we sell Ibrox and move elsewhere while we are at it. I do understand what you are saying, but it is also more than a question of identity. You can bet Sellik et al will be pushing for a number of penalties over a number of years should we go straight back into the SPL. (15 points per season for 4 years has already been mentioned! )

Who is Craig Whyte? He is supposed to be Scottish. Some say his father was Irish. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Johnston tell it, anybody could have worked for Whyte. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Whyte Knight ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone Craig after surgery

HMRC did not say that they would keep appealing. Whyte said they would. It was a crucial statement to soften the fans up for administration, and pave the way for worse. The big bad HMRC caused all this trouble etc. My point was I'd rather cut our cloth and arrange some repayment scheme based over a number of years rather than killing a company that has existed for 140 years.

Really? You think we are going to avoid liquidation and reformation? It seems to me that more and more on here are coming to the conclusion that this is where Whyte wants to take us. Frankly I'd take 5 years of winning nothing and playing 18 years old lads rather than liquidate the company.

I thought it was. HMRC applied to put us into admin, so we had to rush out and put ourselves in 10 days early

I don't have a problem with the club being saved. However, I'm fairly sure this 'saving' will involve us being liquidated then reformed. Aside from the whole issue of identity and history, it would mean no Europe for three years, a lot of grovelling to the league to be allowed back in and possibly other penalties suggested by the liks of the green and grey. WVB, would you be happy with the liquidation/reformation scenario cause I don't see much chance of it not happening. It seems HMRC don't actually care a settlement if there are 8 more clubs to chase. They'd have a stronger hand if they went the whole way with us.

I thought that big tax case was not covered by admin curently, so the result would have to be announced during our administration, meaning we can't come out of admin until it is known, no? Which may mean that we are still in admin after the euro deadline of the 31st of March. I assumed the only definite way to get rid of the big tax case, so we lose it, would be to liquidate the club, not go into admin.

90 days either way or just after? That is a large chunk of time, and given we are already in admin I think the debt will not be waived. I'm unsure what the debt referred to here is though. Is it referring to the original £18m bank debt that was 'paid off'? IE If we are not in admin/insolvent within 90 days of the tax case result then Craig Whyte assumes the debt otherwise it is Rangers?