The case against Geovanni Gómez seems unlikely precisely because he is so unknown.
Known simply as Geovanni on the field, the Brazilian ended 2008 as Hull’s top scorer in their first season in the top flight English league.
In contrast Real Madrid and Barcelona stars have become unstuck over their multi-million euro image rights.
However, the Hull City case is the first of a series of investigations taking in 38 professional football clubs, 90 players, and 13 agents under investigation for the use of their offshore image rights.
Inflated salary
HMRC have observed in the latest round of the tax tribunal that Gómez’s image “was of no real commercial value”.
Lawyers for HMRC have argued that the image rights payments were used “to inflate Mr Gómez’s net salary to a figure close to what he had received at his previous club” and the payments are nothing to do with ‘image rights’”.
The footballer transferred ownership of his image rights to a British Virgin Islands company, to avoid UK income tax on the company’s revenues from his former employer, Hull City AFC.
Image rights convention
Sports personalities are entitled to pay up to 20% of their players’ earnings direct to offshore image rights companies.
However, in January 2017, a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said that the rules allowing footballers’ income from image rights to be treated as a separate revenue stream were being exploited for tax avoidance.
The March Budget this year announced that new guidelines would be developed for image rights payments, and, in April 2017, HMRC announced its officials would be visiting all English Premier League, Championship and Scottish Premier League clubs over the next three years to check tax compliance, especially licencing payments to players for their image rights.
HMRC has described the Gómez’s image arrangements as a ‘sham’ designed to keep his income and national insurance contributions out of the UK tax net.
Hull deny the accusations and have argued it is upto HMRC to prove they have done anything wrong
The case continues.
