The unidentifiable beauty of charity donations.
Last Friday night, the findings of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC), an international group of investigative journalists, published a few results of analyzing 18.6 million documents, from the world of football, for many months. The documents were made available by the whistle-blower platform “Football Leaks” to the German weekly “Der Spiegel”, a member of the EIC. Thousands of dodgy tax constructions will be revealed, not only from managing agencies, football club's and officials but even the crooked ways of famous players trying to avoid paying taxes on their income by creative ways of using tax-havens, shadow accounts, phantom invoices and multiple company constructions. But that’s not the essence of where the anger and naive disbelief comes from, to write this column.
As many ordinary people, I was repelled by the fact that the Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo diverted 63.5 million to a tax haven. This evasion of taxes saved him about 35 million. The Real Madrid striker dropped his future sponsorship revenue at two Irish letterbox firms in the Virgin Islands, who booked it through a Swiss bank account of Ronaldo. Of course, that information interested me, I do live in Portugal and I know he’s seen as a big hero, especially because of the millions he gives to charity. The fact that an average citizen will lose everything he or she owns, including the roof they live under, when not being able to pay the taxes, seems to stand in a big contrast with the way the rich people of this world are treated. To think this is just about football stars, you can’t even comprehend the amounts of desperately needed money, by the current society, that disappears from the radar thru this un-moralistic and plane criminal procedures. And still, that’s not even where the real anger I feel comes from.
Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the biggest earners in international football. His club Real Madrid pays him an annual salary of about 38 million euros. In addition to playing football Ronaldo earns tens of millions per year with his image rights: multinationals like Toyota, Nike and Unilever pay him millions for performances in their advertising campaigns, in Spain and abroad. On these revenues, Ronaldo pays (advised by a team of lawyers and tax consultants) hardly any tax. He sold his image rights for the years 2015 to 2020 to the two firms on the Virgin Islands. They paid him 75 million euro. The largest portion of this amount (63.5 million) he didn’t declare to the Spanish tax authorities, the documents now published prove that. He did report the remaining 11 million because they were Spanish advertising contracts. Because he sold his contract to his own firm at the Virgin Islands for the period until 2020, he had to pay 25 percent, the rate to be paid in 2014, instead of the 50 percent he would have to payed under the new tax regime. And even that because of a law that had to lure successful foreigners to Spain with a favourable tax rate. And of course, the Spanish tax authorities were struggling with Ronaldo’s taxes. An in-depth investigation into his tax returns for the years 2011-13 remained without consequences. To the relief of Ronaldo’s advisers. “We have been saved”, they even emailed each other. “Thank God.” Sometimes the tax authorities find ways to get to the bottom of it and gave another Portuguese football greatness, José Mourinho, now coach of Manchester United but formerly of Real Madrid, a 5.8 million euro fine. Just like Ronaldo he had a construction which by his income was transferred to the Virgin Islands. Now did Ronaldo pay any tax, and this is what makes it despicable, well, not much, because he’s profiling himself as a big charity donation hero, donations, of course, are deductible from the small percentage of his income he does report.
Still, this isn’t what worries me, it’s the moral of the elite and the rich, and the only thing we can do about it is making sure that investigators have the means and the laws behind them to catch the criminals. What worries me most is how people react. “Good for him”, “what a smart guy”, “Well he better give it to charity than to the corrupt tax officials!” But here’s the point. If people that make over a hundred million a year would just pay their taxes, we wouldn’t need charity events for a new van, so disabled children can be transported to school, we wouldn’t have to make “3 times a day toilet” contracts with people in elderly homes because we can’t afford the employees, we wouldn’t have 10 percent of the European children go to school without breakfast, because their family is living below the “poverty line”, we wouldn’t have people waiting for an operation for months because we can’t pay doctors wages, we wouldn’t have to organize a charity event to rebuild houses for Italian earthquake victims, we wouldn’t need, well… Our gouvernments wouldn’t need to take loans from crooked bankers that invented these tax-haven constructions in the first place, so the national debts keep growing and force them to cut pensions, disability benefits and social security.
Ten percent, just those ten percent make more money than the whole world is worth if they paid their taxes this world wouldn’t be so fucked-up. We know they will not do that voluntarily, so we could at least try to make them pay their dues to society. What worries me the most is the people who don’t care. Who probably are well of, sitting on the couch with a glass of wine looking at some Netflix movie or a Champions League match, cheering on their heroes, while half of the people in the stadium took a loan to buy a season ticket to watch the games of their beloved team. People who put their luxury car behind an electric gate when they come home from their daily restaurant diner, have a beer on the terrace and use their 600 Euro digital screen to look on Facebook for dog pictures and cat movies, comment on some funny posts and scroll past the important inconvenient news, before taking a nightcap and dream about the delicious meal they’re going to have the next day at that hidden away little restaurant at the seaside, unknown to tourists, while a few houses further up the road a couple is worrying about the schoolbook donation that should have been paid in October and a 15 euro water bill they have to pay within 24 hours. Lack of compassion and an eye for the truth, the mentality of “It doesn’t concern me”, that’s what worries me most.
As many ordinary people, I was repelled by the fact that the Portuguese football player Cristiano Ronaldo diverted 63.5 million to a tax haven. This evasion of taxes saved him about 35 million. The Real Madrid striker dropped his future sponsorship revenue at two Irish letterbox firms in the Virgin Islands, who booked it through a Swiss bank account of Ronaldo. Of course, that information interested me, I do live in Portugal and I know he’s seen as a big hero, especially because of the millions he gives to charity. The fact that an average citizen will lose everything he or she owns, including the roof they live under, when not being able to pay the taxes, seems to stand in a big contrast with the way the rich people of this world are treated. To think this is just about football stars, you can’t even comprehend the amounts of desperately needed money, by the current society, that disappears from the radar thru this un-moralistic and plane criminal procedures. And still, that’s not even where the real anger I feel comes from.
Cristiano Ronaldo is one of the biggest earners in international football. His club Real Madrid pays him an annual salary of about 38 million euros. In addition to playing football Ronaldo earns tens of millions per year with his image rights: multinationals like Toyota, Nike and Unilever pay him millions for performances in their advertising campaigns, in Spain and abroad. On these revenues, Ronaldo pays (advised by a team of lawyers and tax consultants) hardly any tax. He sold his image rights for the years 2015 to 2020 to the two firms on the Virgin Islands. They paid him 75 million euro. The largest portion of this amount (63.5 million) he didn’t declare to the Spanish tax authorities, the documents now published prove that. He did report the remaining 11 million because they were Spanish advertising contracts. Because he sold his contract to his own firm at the Virgin Islands for the period until 2020, he had to pay 25 percent, the rate to be paid in 2014, instead of the 50 percent he would have to payed under the new tax regime. And even that because of a law that had to lure successful foreigners to Spain with a favourable tax rate. And of course, the Spanish tax authorities were struggling with Ronaldo’s taxes. An in-depth investigation into his tax returns for the years 2011-13 remained without consequences. To the relief of Ronaldo’s advisers. “We have been saved”, they even emailed each other. “Thank God.” Sometimes the tax authorities find ways to get to the bottom of it and gave another Portuguese football greatness, José Mourinho, now coach of Manchester United but formerly of Real Madrid, a 5.8 million euro fine. Just like Ronaldo he had a construction which by his income was transferred to the Virgin Islands. Now did Ronaldo pay any tax, and this is what makes it despicable, well, not much, because he’s profiling himself as a big charity donation hero, donations, of course, are deductible from the small percentage of his income he does report.
Still, this isn’t what worries me, it’s the moral of the elite and the rich, and the only thing we can do about it is making sure that investigators have the means and the laws behind them to catch the criminals. What worries me most is how people react. “Good for him”, “what a smart guy”, “Well he better give it to charity than to the corrupt tax officials!” But here’s the point. If people that make over a hundred million a year would just pay their taxes, we wouldn’t need charity events for a new van, so disabled children can be transported to school, we wouldn’t have to make “3 times a day toilet” contracts with people in elderly homes because we can’t afford the employees, we wouldn’t have 10 percent of the European children go to school without breakfast, because their family is living below the “poverty line”, we wouldn’t have people waiting for an operation for months because we can’t pay doctors wages, we wouldn’t have to organize a charity event to rebuild houses for Italian earthquake victims, we wouldn’t need, well… Our gouvernments wouldn’t need to take loans from crooked bankers that invented these tax-haven constructions in the first place, so the national debts keep growing and force them to cut pensions, disability benefits and social security.
Ten percent, just those ten percent make more money than the whole world is worth if they paid their taxes this world wouldn’t be so fucked-up. We know they will not do that voluntarily, so we could at least try to make them pay their dues to society. What worries me the most is the people who don’t care. Who probably are well of, sitting on the couch with a glass of wine looking at some Netflix movie or a Champions League match, cheering on their heroes, while half of the people in the stadium took a loan to buy a season ticket to watch the games of their beloved team. People who put their luxury car behind an electric gate when they come home from their daily restaurant diner, have a beer on the terrace and use their 600 Euro digital screen to look on Facebook for dog pictures and cat movies, comment on some funny posts and scroll past the important inconvenient news, before taking a nightcap and dream about the delicious meal they’re going to have the next day at that hidden away little restaurant at the seaside, unknown to tourists, while a few houses further up the road a couple is worrying about the schoolbook donation that should have been paid in October and a 15 euro water bill they have to pay within 24 hours. Lack of compassion and an eye for the truth, the mentality of “It doesn’t concern me”, that’s what worries me most.
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