According to El Mundo, the Administrative Chamber of the National High Court has annulled a Tax penalty of €571,073.28 euros imposed on Portuguese coach José Mourinho in connection with his signing with Real Madrid. It concludes that the coach’s “guilt” in channelling payments to his agent, Jorge Mendes, through the white club has not been duly accredited and severely reproaches the tax authorities for using, among other things, “blatantly erroneous” arguments.
The Fourth Section presided over by the magistrate María Asunción Salvo has analysed the appeal presented by the Portuguese, assisted by the tax expert Manuel de Vicente Tutor, from Equipo Económico. The latter has discussed one of the inspections to which Mou was subjected in relation to personal income tax for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012. The action analysed in this ruling relates specifically to a settlement that was carried out through administrative channels, which amounted to €1,452,441 in terms of fraud, penalty and interest, which was finally reduced.
The court declared one of the years inspected, 2010, to be time-barred, arguing that the criteria used by the administration to uphold the validity of its actions were “manifestly erroneous, contradictory and lacking in reasoning”. But the “heart of the matter”, as the ruling points out, lies in the payment made by Real Madrid to the company Gestifute, owned by Mourinho’s agent. An entity “dedicated to the intermediation between sportsmen and football clubs” and which received, in the opinion of the tax authorities, “an income obtained” by the coach and which he “should have included in his liquidation”. The ruling considers that “the regulations are clear and categorical”, and the payment to the agent should have been made by the coach himself. In this case, the ruling states, “Mendes’ remuneration has been paid by Real Madrid, which has meant that the coach has received less income from his work”. “If this had been done correctly, it would have meant a higher taxation”. For this reason, he considers that “there is concealment” by Mourinho “of data to the Treasury in the IRPF declarations for the period 2010-2011.”
