The National Court has again ruled in favor of the former Barcelona player Dani Alves in a tax case concerning his image rights. The court ordered the Treasury to return 3.2 million euros after finding that Alves properly declared his image rights during his time with the Barcelona squad.
In decisions issued on October 25 and November 2, the Disputed Administrative Chamber of the National Court sustained Alves’ appeal against rulings by the Central Economic-Administrative Court (TEAC). The appeals concerned the income declarations for 2009, 2010-2011-2012, and the related settlement agreements tied to personal income tax, as handled by the Catalan delegation. The core issue centered on how the profits from image rights should be treated and taxed in those years.
Tax authorities began examining Alves’s taxation in 2014, focusing on image rights while he was a Barcelona FC player. At that time, he lent his image rights to Cedro Sports, a company with 51 percent owned by Alves and 49 percent by his ex-wife Dinorah Santana Da Silva, who also served as the company’s manager.
In 2008 Alves transferred the rights to Cedro Sports for 1.6 million euros. When he joined Barcelona later that year, part of his salary was paid through the company, a structure the tax administration questioned during the audit. The authorities argued that the gains from the use of these image rights should be treated as capital gains under corporate tax rules.
Alves’s defense maintained that his remuneration complied with the law, noting that about 85 percent of his pay was distributed under the employment contract with the club, while the remaining 15 percent related to image rights invoiced by Cedro Esports. During the proceedings, sources quoted by La Vanguardia and accessed by EFE report that the Disputed Administrative Chamber rejected the Tax Office’s interpretation of the settlements and stated that Alves did not receive compensation from Cedro Sports for those portions of his salary. Instead, Alves argued he donated more than 15 percent of his earnings to cover image rights.
According to the court, when the so-called 85/15 rule is followed, there is no justification to regularize the arrangement, as the rule validates the actions taken by the player. In practical terms, the remaining profit invoiced by Cedro Sports would be taxed under the corporate tax regime.
Additionally, the Treasury had asserted that Alves failed to disclose his Barcelona salary to manager José Rodríguez Baster during contract renewal discussions. The National Court, however, found that the manager acted on behalf of the club and not for Alves personally, and thus the claim about a conflict of interest arising from the contract between the player and PROMOSPORT did not hold. The court emphasized that the agreement dated August 18, 2005, involving BASTER BCN, SL, was an administrative arrangement at the tax, accounting, labor, and commercial levels, rather than an agreement affecting player contracts with football clubs. This interpretation stood in opposition to the penalties proposed by the Tax Office, which had been subject to an appeal.
The two sentences cited above were added to a recent ruling from the Disputed Administrative Chamber regarding income earned in 2013-2014 and the transfer of Alves’s image rights. The court confirmed that the income used in that period supported Alves’s position and annulled part of the Tax Office’s demand for payment of 2 million euros, overturning that portion of the assessment.
Overall, the judgments underscore the importance of how image rights arrangements intersect with employment income and corporate taxation rules. They illustrate that carefully structured agreements, properly documented and aligned with applicable regulations, can affect tax outcomes in major athlete compensation schemes. The rulings also highlight that the administrative actors involved sometimes view related contracts and management agreements through a lens that favors the taxpayer when the parties’ actions are within legal boundaries and properly disclosed. The case remains a notable reference for similar disputes involving high-profile footballers and image-rights arrangements, offering a clear example of how a court can diverge from initial tax interpretations when the documented structure and accompanying declarations are sound.