Football finance expert, Kieran Maguire has revealed that Tottenham were the victim of tax breaks in their collapsed deal to bring Paulo Fonseca to North London.
Maguire has told Football Insider that the same tax breaks that convinced Cristiano Ronaldo to join Juventus may have scuppered Spurs’ deal with Fonseca.
It was reported by The Guardian earlier this month that Tottenham’s talks with Fonseca had collapsed at the eleventh hour due to tax reasons.
Due to the different tax rules in Italy, Maguire revealed that Spurs may not have been able to offer Fonseca the same post-tax wages as he earned at Roma last season.
The finance expert claimed that foreign nationals in Italy have the chance to pay a set fee to the government before being taxed at a very low rate.
He said: “The rule only applies to foreign nationals. That’s why Ronaldo went there.
“What you can do is pay the Italian government a set fee and this means that a large proportion of your income gets taxed at a very low rate.
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“When you are looking at remuneration, they focus on net. They don’t care how much they are being paid, they just want to know how much they actually get each month.
“The gross salary might be lower but they won’t care about that.”
I suspect that it was a little more than tax reasons that caused the talks with Fonseca to collapse. Things would not have gone as far as they did otherwise. I think that it had more to do with the coach’s plans for the team.
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