Outrage upon outrage

Outrage upon outrage! Not content with all his other sins against humanity, The Chancellor is changing the law to make cricketers’ benefits chargeable to income tax. It would never have happened in the old days, we cry, when respectable politicians were members of MCC.

The case of Reed v Seymour, which is what the exemption depended on, was heard by the House of Lords in 1927 (his benefit year was 1920 – the courts didn’t move any faster then). The legend always held that their lordships were MCC members, but if they were they kept it dark, none of them mentioning it in their entries in Who’s Who.

This was not to stop dark muttering about cricketers being treated more favourably than other sports. Unlike most other sports, if professionals were not themselves gentlemen, they mixed with gentlemen on the field; of course for many years some amateurs claimed far more in expenses than the professionals did in wages, and it is most unlikely that any of them paid tax on that.

But there were reasons why cricketers were treated differently from footballers. A footballer’s benefit or testimonial match was due under his contract and so clearly part of his remuneration. A cricketer would receive a benefit at the whim of the gentlemen of the county committee, and whether it did him any good was down to the weather gods or others: Albert Trott with a four in four and a hat trick in the same match being the best example of someone completely stuffing up his finances. Jack Hobbs, granted a benefit in August 1914, at least played long enough to qualify for another.

Eventually footballers and others realised what was happening and started restructuring testimonials so that their employer was not involved and they could slip through the same loophole. And it was not unknown for the local District Inspector to advise the testimonial committee to make sure they got it right; when I was in the Revenue my boss in Stoke helped with Stanley Matthews testimonial.

But what had started as relatively small sums (just over £900 in James Seymour’s case) began to mount and in recent years seven figures sums have been mentioned in some cases. Of course the journeyman professional who can only trawl resources locally will not make so much, and may feel hard done by, though there will be an exemption of up to £50,000. But the system has effectively been done for by its over exploitation