Taking Stock: England footballer’s contract stopped short by accountant’s text
Peter Crouch must have felt three feet tall when he got a particularly distressing text from his accountant
EURO 2016 is in full swing, so TS couldn’t resist bringing you some football-related tax gossip, but we have to all jump in TS’ time machine and travel back five years for this particular story.
Former Tottenham, Liverpool and England star Peter Crouch told a tax tribunal judge that he reluctantly left Spurs for Stoke City on Transfer Deadline Day in 2011 after his accountant texted him saying he was no longer in the first-team squad and would ‘sit out’’ the remaining two years at the North London club.
Crouch told judge Jonathan Richards that he was compensated by Spurs for the final two years of his contract.
Tax officials argue that the compensation should be classed as earnings and be subject to income tax, but Tottenham disagreed, claiming that the money was ‘compensation’, not earnings.
The judge ruled in Tottenham’s favour, which will probably go down as one of the best results of their season, seeing as they relinquished any hope of winning the Premier League title to Chelsea in dramatic fashion, and slipped behind bitter rivals Arsenal in the league table on the final day of the season.
TS believes that if Spurs had Peter Crouch in the team, the result could have been different…
