While all were oohing and aahing over Barcelona's sex on a pitch football and the free-spending ways of Florentino Perez returning to Madrid, the biggest difference maker in Spanish football was lurking under the Spanish limelight. In fact it was lurking so far under the Spanish limelight it was in Britain. Click to continue reading...

The rise of La Liga and its increasing appeal to foreign players can be attributed to more than just Real Madrid spending money like a teenage girl with a trust fund. Everyone agrees that the "Beckham Law", which allows footballers to pay almost half the taxes that normal people do, has been a big draw, especially as the tax rate has risen in the UK.

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Well, here's probably the first of many English players going abroad. Serial drunkard Jermaine Pennant will be playing for Real Zaragoza in the La Liga. With the current financial climate in the United Kingdom, who can blame him really? By next April, every Tom, Dick and Harry of the rich and famous nature will be [. Click to continue reading...

From the office of the Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith comes this:

A plan to establish a "green" jobs development institute, put federal money to work creating tens of thousands of new infrastructure jobs and getting more than 1,000 new cops on the street are just some of the job creation efforts included in this year's budget passed today.

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The Public Policy Institute of New York State, the research arm of the state Business Council, released a study Tuesday comparing average annual wages, electricity costs, commercial rents and tax burdens across the United States. To the surprise of absolutely no one, New York ranked high on the list of most expensive places to do business [. Click to continue reading...

I wrote a while back about a soccer league that had been severely penalized by the IRS for improperly classifying youth soccer coaches as independent contractors instead of as employees: For the past two years, the association has been grappling with an I.R.S. audit that found the association failed to withhold taxes for a dozen paid [...] Click to continue reading...