{"id":6821,"date":"2010-05-12T18:28:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T16:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/12\/fifa-demands-tax-free-status\/"},"modified":"2010-05-12T18:28:50","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T16:28:50","slug":"fifa-demands-tax-free-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2010\/05\/12\/fifa-demands-tax-free-status\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA demands tax free status"},"content":{"rendered":"

An extraordinary article from the BBC web site says:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The BBC can reveal, for the first time, the full scale of the remarkable tax concessions that the world football authority Fifa demands of countries that wish to host a World Cup competition.<\/p>\n

This Friday, 14 May, in Zurich in Switzerland, representatives of footballing countries around the world will submit their bids to host either the 2018 or 2022 tournaments.<\/p>\n

The bidding nations have been asked to comply with a wide variety of conditions that Fifa has laid down - and which it would like to keep confidential.<\/p>\n

Among them is that the entire event should be free of tax for Fifa.<\/p>\n

"Any host country requires a comprehensive tax exemption to be given to Fifa and further parties involved in the hosting and staging of an event," said a Fifa spokesman.<\/p>\n

This means that to be successful in its bid, the UK government must agree to forgo tens of millions of pounds in tax for the benefit of Fifa, which - as a charitable organisation - pays hardly any tax to its home country of Switzerland.<\/p>\n

It also appears to mean that the tournament income of the players, some of whom are among the highest paid earners in the world, should also be exempt from tax.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the case of South Africa. It has spent a fortune building facilities for the Wold Cup and it seems unlikely that FIFA will be allowing it any return at all.<\/p>\n

This is straightforwardly abusive, and abusive in the private interests of an enormously wealthy elite.<\/p>\n

Right around the world people should be profoundly disgusted at this abuse of developed and developing countries alike. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An extraordinary article from the BBC web site says: The BBC can reveal, for the first time, the full scale of the remarkable tax concessions
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}