FC Barcelona doesn’t win for upsets, a club on a rollercoaster in which the strongest emotions always coincide with bad news. FC Barcelona’s financial situation, at permanent risk according to experts in the field, has received a new blow. The Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court confirmed yesterday the resolution of the Central Administrative Economic Court (TEAC), which imposed on the Barcelona club the payment of almost 23 million euros for personal income tax between the years 2012 and 2015 derived from the remuneration paid to various player representatives.
The ruling implies the rejection of the appeal presented by Barcelona against the TEAC resolution, which dated from June 2020 and claimed the amounts of 8,764,118 euros of tax settlement, as well as the subscriptions of 3,031,893 euros (2012), 4,348. 402 euros (2013), 5,172,955 euros (2014) and 1,414,158 euros (2015) as a penalty. The dates of the affected financial years coincide with the presidential mandates of Sandro Rosell (2010-2014) and Josep Maria Bartomeu (2014-2020).
FC Barcelona issued a statement after the judgment was made public in which it said it would appeal before the Supreme Court and expressed its surprise at how “this section of the Administrative Litigation of the National Court has not taken into account the jurisprudence more recent decision of the Supreme Court on this issue and by which other football clubs have been able to benefit in recent rulings on the same issue”.
Legal sources close to the case assure this newspaper that, although Barça does not verbalize it in its statement, among these clubs is Real Madrid, acquitted by the Supreme Court several times for the same type of payment through the corresponding sentences .
The Barcelona club, in this statement, adds that “it is also surprising the divergent criteria of the National Court when, a few months ago, another section considered an appeal from our club on an issue identical to the current one that arose from the same inspection in relation to the tax on the income of non-residents”.
In any case, the Barcelona note concludes, “the sentence does not entail any payment obligation on the part of the club at the moment, because this contingency is properly provisioned in the annual accounts”.
According to the resolution of the National Court that condemns Barcelona, ??the substantive issue has to do with the nature of the services provided by the players’ agents. While the administration claims that the remuneration paid by the club to the representatives are work performance and are subject to withholding at the time of payment, FC Barcelona understands that there is no need to impute the amounts as player remuneration.
The court recalls verbatim that “in tax simulation it is necessary to use artifices aimed at tax evasion, that is, to enjoy tax advantages that do not correspond to the real operation carried out”. It is, he adds, “to obtain a tax treatment of the taxable event and its concurrent circumstances, more favorable than would correspond to the actual operation”.
In the wording of the sentence of the National Court, the cause of the sanction is specified: “The club pretends to pay the agent non-existent services, when in reality part of the remuneration is being paid to the player “in this way, for the services it provides to the club, with the corresponding tax incidence, which affects IS, VAT and personal income tax, and distorts the taxable base of these tax concepts”.
