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When Mervyn King isn't worrying about inflation and growth, the Bank of England governor's got the shortage of transfer funding at Aston Villa to add to his more personal woes.

But his opposite number in charge of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs is taking a close interest in the football transfer market for very different reasons.

Among the themes running through the latest annual survey of British football finance from accountants PKF is the role of the taxman (though said official ought, by now, to be a taxperson).

Now, it wouldn't take a particularly cynical observer to question whether the authors of this report might have good commercial reason to flag up issues of tax compliance. There are contracts to be won out of this sort of thing.

Tax torch

But it is, at least, interesting to see where they think the taxman is poking his forensic accounting torch.

One area is into the late payment of tax. More than a quarter of clubs in this survey admit to having paid tax bills late. Of the six Scottish Premier League clubs, only one said it had done so, and that was with prior agreement.

But in the English leagues, others are not getting that agreement. And the advice of football tax adviser John Cassidy is that HMRC is getting less understanding of late payments.

If it feels a club is at risk of collapse, it can protect its own position and push for payment, or require an independent assessment of whether a club is viable.

Another concern is over profitability. Only 22% of those surveyed expect to make a profit over the next accounting period (two out of six in Scotland, sharply down on last year). And if profits aren't anticipated, there are areas where the taxperson can question the legal capacity of clubs to write anything off as expenses.

Image conscious

There's a crackdown looming also on the "image rights" paid to players, which that taxperson sees as income - taxable for top earners at 50% - rather than an opportunity for depositing supposed royalties in offshore accounts.

That's obviously not a big concern for smaller clubs. But for England's Premier League, half of them are concerned about a big bill being slapped on them for part-paying players this way.

It's not clear from the 41-club survey of finance directors what the position is for Rangers - none of the survey participants are named - but it's reported the Glasgow club is being closely watched by HMRC for similar practices in player payments.

According to John Cassidy: "HMRC has so far failed to make much of an impact in this area, but specialist investigators are now asking more searching questions and demanding high volumes of data under relatively new information gathering powers. I now expect HMRC to mount more challenges and tricky investigations into both clubs and players".

While the football finance survey starts a new season with a whiff of optimism that they are climbing away from the dire days of 2009, there is still plenty concerns about the inflexibility of player pay.

Fewer pies

There's been a marked rise in the proportion of clubs that spend more than 65% of revenue on wages. Some 38% of respondents do so, up by double in two years. Back in 2008, 59% of clubs thought they could increase those payroll costs. This year, it's down to 24%.

Player pay is not the top concern for Scottish Premier League clubs, according to PKF. They were found to be particularly concerned about falling attendances, but pessimistic also about catering revenue (fewer pies, less Bovril) and corporate sponsorship.

Facing that evidence, the Scottish finance directors were praised for their pessimism. That's seen by the accountants as being the most realistic view to take.

Growth concerns

In another survey of business financial health and investment intentions, Clydesdale Bank has shown Scotland's pessimism goes rather further than football.

True, half of companies are planning to spend more than 6% of turnover back into the business. Sounds impressive? Well look at it this way.
Some 24% intend to spend nothing at all on investment. One in ten companies expect to contract rather than grow.

And the Clydesdale found 27% see their banks as a constraint on growth plans.

While 50% of Scottish companies aim to get past the 6% of turnover mark, that's true of 61% of businesses in London and 55% in north-west England.

To Clydesdale's regional director, Scott McKerracher, this isn't pessimism - it's "relative conservatism".