EBT conundrum arising from Glasgow Rangers

In HMRC’s ‘Working with Tax Agents’ blog on 17 August () HMRC stated that the Supreme Court decision in the Glasgow Rangers case stated that any payments made through an employee benefit trust (EBT) should be considered as taxable income as opposed to a loan. This raises an interesting conundrum and I wonder whether any Taxation readers have considered it.

The real decision

The decision in the Rangers case (RFC 2012 plc (formerly Rangers Football Club Plc) v Advocate General for Scotland [2017] STC 1556) was not that a loan should be considered as taxable income but rather that if something is earnings it is taxable on the employee even if the recipient of the largesse is a third party.

In this case the evidence was that the money was earnings even before it went into the EBT. HMRC had assessed the company not the EBT to...