ANOTHER of football’s current greatest players has gone on trial in Spain charged with tax evasion. Cristiano Ronaldo is alleged to have evaded more than $17 million in taxes, an offense the Real Madrid player is vigorously denying.

Last year Barcelona’s Argentinian star Lionel Messi was found guilty of defrauding the Spanish treasury of $4.8 million and was sentenced to 21 months in jail which he avoided by paying $250,000. Earlier in the year, Messi’s teammate Javier Mascherano was given a one-year jail sentence for tax fraud, which was suspended.

The question these high-profile cases provoke is why these fabulously-paid individuals should seek to avoid paying the tax like ordinary people. The first answer is that there is a huge industry in Europe and North America that specializes in reducing the tax obligations of very high net-worth individuals. An army of accountants and lawyers is on hand to take advantage of loopholes that exist in tax legislation. It is perhaps not for nothing that a great many elected legislators are themselves lawyers and accountants. There has long been a suspicion that by creating complex and ambiguous tax rules, they are busy making work for themselves.

On the face of it tax, both personal and corporate, ought to be a simple matter. A rate is set, income is declared and the required tax paid. But every national tax regime is shot through with a plethora of exemptions and exceptions which in the hands of enterprising tax professionals are often used to drive a coach and horses through the rules. It is frequently said that there is a difference between tax mitigation and tax avoidance. The first takes legitimate advantage of loopholes. The second is a crime.

But it is not that necessarily that simple. Some schemes peddled by lawyers and accountants need to be tested in the courts when the super-rich contest demands from the tax authorities. The scandal of international corporations domiciling themselves in low tax locations through which they channel their profits via a network of internal companies paying each other royalties is well documented. Tax collectors often give up when confronted by an array of highly-paid corporate lawyers and accountants and frequently settle for significantly lower figures than they initially demanded.

Corporate executives will often protest that they are only protecting shareholder value. There is no such excuse for individuals. Now, it may be that these football stars were told by their managers that they were earning so much money, there was no point paying tax unnecessarily. Indeed it has been the defense of some wealthy individuals that they left their tax affairs to others and had no idea of what was being done in their name. This really does not wash.

And there is another important element to this issue. Football stars of the caliber of Ronaldo and Messi are powerful role models for their millions of fans around the world. Misbehavior on the pitch is rightly deplored by international football authorities and referees are tightening up on “diving” and other phony antics. Feigning injury in the hope of securing a penalty is fraud, just like lying to the taxman. The great football stars should be protecting their reputations off the pitch as well as on it.