Transfer fees

[Bill and ben]

i quite often hear fees being quoted comparatively:  "We bought him for 8m and sold him for 9m so have made a 1 m profit" etc.  I'm sure it doesn't work like that,  but how does it work? 

Are the transfer fees quoted pre agency fee or post? Does the tax man look at any capital gain? Does a proportion of the incoming fee get diverted to the player to compensate for loyalty bonuses foregone? If we sell more than we buy do we lose out to VAT.  My suspicion is that if you buy a guy for 8 and sell him for 9 you actually make quite a loss once everything else ( excluding salary) is considered. Anyone know?

 

[Canaryboy]

You are probably right, its a gross figure before all sorts of leeches get their grubby hands on slices of the pie. Also a club can present whatever fee they want to the media can't they, its the accounts which tell the true story. Take the Snodgrass and Brady transfers for example, both reported at £7m. But when we signed Brady Hull probably still owed 75% of that transfer fee if spread over the contract length (also common), so wonder whether we actually paid just £1.75m cash but wrote off the remaining three years of Snodgrass debt.