England players are also not far behind as far as attracting tax controversies is concerned. Long ago, Daily Mail reported that members of the England cricket team could face an investigation by the taxmen amid allegations that they had tried to exploit a loophole to mitigate their tax liabilities. According to Daily Mail, Andrew Strauss and Kevin Petersen, the then members of the England squad were facing the heat of an inquiry. England’s World Cup winning star cricketer Adil Rashid has been ‘named and shamed’ by the Inland Revenue as a tax evader. The ace bowler, who helped England lift the World Cup at Lords in 2019, was identified by tax officials as a ‘deliberate defaulter’ who failed to pay more than 100000 pounds in taxes. The Yorkshire cricketer, who has a ‘central’ contract with the England team where stars are paid around 1 million pound a year, defaulted on his tax returns for over four years from 2013-2017.
Cricketers have always been on the radar of the Income Tax department. In 2000, when the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI] was probing match-fixing allegations, the Income Tax department searched 90 premises and 29 lockers, seizing Rs 3.84 crore in cash, jewellery and other assets. This was told in the Rajya Sabha by the then Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha and his deputy, minister of state for revenue, Dhananjay Kumar. There were seven players whose premises, residential and otherwise, were searched. They were: Mohammed Azharuddin, Kapil Dev, Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakar, Navjot Sidhu, Ajay Sharma and Nikhil Chopra.
According to a news report, in 2018, former Sri Lanka captain Sanath Jayasuriya, along with two other cricketers had been accused of smuggling in rotten betel nuts in India. Two other cricketers were also said to be involved in the alleged tax-evasion fraudulent deal but their names are yet to be revealed. The Directorate of Revenue intelligence seized betel nuts worth millions of rupees in Nagpur. After his name cropped up during the investigation, Jayasuriya was also called to Mumbai for questioning by the authorities. After the probe, a letter was sent to the Sri Lanka government for further inquiry.
But tax evasion is not done only by cricketers around the world. Even online betting platforms are evading taxes, thus hurting the Indian economy. In the recently concluded T20 World Cup in Australia, the cricketing fans were seen glued to their TV sets. On the TV, punctuating the overs were advertisements of various betting and online gaming apps, with most of them endorsed by our favourite cricketers and TV/movie actors. Such advertisements are all over the digital platforms, social media etc in present times but there’s a red flag.
