Tax-dodging Fulham?

[Shredhead]

All the recent lambasting of Google, Amazon, Starbucks etc reminds me that I read a post on this forum about the extremely complicated ownership structure of our beloved club.
It sounded very much like the 'offshoring' that these and other (sometimes nominally British) companies use.
Can anyone track the post down or further enlighten us?
I don't have any option about paying tax, so neither should companies - including, I suppose, the club.

[b+w geezer]

The Chairman's personal finances are oblique and goodness knows what his personal tax situation is, but there's nothing abnormal about the situation of the club itself. In common with others it files audited accounts with UK Companies House, in which the main income stream, the share of broadcasting revenues, is after all public knowledge, the secondary sources (from attendances and commercial) are as you'd expect, while the main cost, payroll, is also on the record. Depreciations and so on are dealt with according to UK accounting standards and it's all very conventional. For a pound a time anyone can download the accounts from Companies House.

[Forever Fulham]

I think any time you have shells incorporated in the Cayman Islands or similar locales, you can at least suspect a tax dodge.  But if it's legal, well...

[b+w geezer]

I think any time you have shells incorporated in the Cayman Islands or similar locales, you can at least suspect a tax dodge.  But if it's legal, well...

The club trades conventionally. MAF is the owner, that's not a secret. Anything he gives to the club or takes from the club is accounted for.

Loads of aspects of MAF's personal finances and other business dealings are unknown to us, and always will be, but the football side is essentially transparent and indeed has no choice other than to be. That is to say that the broad brushstrokes of how it earns its money and spends it would be impossible to hide from public view even if that were the aim, and the same applies to rivals. Any mysteries are minor ones relative to overall turnover.

And (referring back to the OP) there is no pretence that this is other than a professional football club based in London UK, employing almost all of its staff there and earning its revenue there. It's not such much squeaky cleanliness as that any suggestions to the contrary would be impossible.

[b+w geezer]

Just to add that the original post seems to be conflating two different things -- the way a company accounts for what it does and the way its shareholders do.
Marks & Spencer plc has thousands of owners (shareholders). These people will have acquired the funds to invest in Marks & Spencer in all sorts of ways. Some will own the shares directly in their own name. Some will do so via communal investment vehicles such as unit trusts or company pension schemes. Some via offshore shell companies. Those arrangements will have various tax implications which are between them and which ever place in which they are eligible to pay tax. The situation is no different in the case of Fulham and MAF.

[Roberty]

If you are just looking at our club, it is difficult to see what tax is being dodged. The chairman has overpaid for the assets he now owns and I am not aware of our having made any large profits.

[Shredhead]

Thanks for the replies, in particular b+w geezer's first. Note the question mark at the end of the title of my original post. I seem to recall that the ground was owned by one company, the club by another and there were other companies involved as well and that some of them were offshore.