West Ham co-chairman David Gold says the Inland Revenue must take some of the blame for Portsmouth and Rangers going into administration.

Pompey tumbled into administration earlier this month for the second time in three seasons owing a £2m tax debt, just days after Rangers suffered the same fate with an outstanding tax bill of £9m.

Gold and fellow Special Report studio guest former Portsmouth chief executive Peter Storrie believe that tax authorities aren't doing enough to help struggling football clubs.

"It's almost as if they are attacking football and it's not in the normal way of business," said Gold.

He added: "I know from my own businesses and football business that everything is done appropriately and already the evidence is that the tax people have to look at themselves and say 'we are not winning any cases, we're bringing lots of cases, they are not winning cases," said Gold.

"I think it is them that needs to do the due diligence before they bring these cases. My concern is that they are focusing on football - these are criminal cases that they bring; why aren't they coming into a football club and saying 'we'd like to check these contracts, we'd like to check the paperwork' just like they do in any business?

Culpable

"Bizarrely, the tax authorities are culpable in a way and responsible for a number of clubs going into administration by bizarrely not collecting taxes and allowing debts to build up in a football club.

"How can, for example, if we are to believe that there is £70m owed to the taxman by Rangers Football Club. How can that be? If they had kept that taxation low by collecting the tax and then the club gets into difficulty - you are talking about £5m owed to the taxman not £70m.

"It's not dissimilar with Portsmouth. When eventually you get there, the amount is horrendous. It does seem to me that in some cases the taxman is collecting from one club on an hourly basis - in other words the tax is due now, the tax must be paid today.

"Another club can be allowed to allow the tax debt to build and build and build and that is the danger. When that club gets into trouble, there is a big sum of money and they end up in administration."

Waste

No-one from HMRC would talk to Special Report on camera but Sky Sports News has got hold of a secret 16-page questionnaire that was sent to every club in the Premier League; it contains 118 questions, each one designed to make sure each one is paying enough tax.

The Premier League generates more than £1bn of tax revenue every year - but the taxman says that is not enough and Storrie, who earlier this month was cleared in court of tax evasion relating to his time at Portsmouth, said that he felt like his former club had been targeted.

"I think they thought they would pick a Premier League side at that time that possibly they could get a chairman, a chief executive and a manager all at once. We said from day one that the case they took against us was going to be the biggest waste of public money, which it turned out to be," he said.

"Where is this £100m they say that is missing in football to the taxman? I see no evidence of it. Items that go onto player's contracts all go through the leagues; everything is detailed through them including any image rights."

Unsustainable

A high court judge is currently considering a ruling on football's preferred creditor status in cases of financial insolvency. The judge's verdict will have a profound effect on the very fabric of the game.

Gold said: "In the best interests of my football club, I need it to stay because I need to borrow money; it's a form of borrowing money because I can buy a player and I can pay for that player over a number of years.

"In the best interests of football, however, I think it should go. Debt is the evil in our industry - we're in a bizarre situation in that normal businesses thrive on competition.

"Competition drives down prices and it drives up value; in football it's the opposite. Competition actually drives the cost of the product up, it drives up the cost of buying the product - which is the players and the wages - and this is unsustainable.

"So in the best interests of football I think you need to remove all forms of debt creation in football clubs and this is a form of debt creation."

Storrie agreed, saying: "It's obviously very, very tough on small businesses and people who work very hard but I think this is going to change football quite dramatically in many ways.

"If you look at the actual transfer market, one of the things that clubs do is they take terms over three, four, five years of payment - not just with clubs in the UK but foreign clubs. If that rule is changed, then that is going to change dramatically because people are either going to want immediate payment or they are going to want bank guarantees with payments or they are going to want to be paid within six to 12 months maximum because otherwise they could be at risk.

"I think this could be a major, major change to how the transfer system could work in the UK."

On next week's Special Report...

We look ahead to the start of the new Formula 1 championship. We'll hear from many of the big players in the sport, including the drivers, the backroom staff and the executives and McLaren team principle, Martin Whitmarsh, joins us in the studio. Tune in on Monday at 1930 on Sky Sports News HD

Don't forget you can watch Special Report - The Taxman's War on Football on Sky Anytime.