HMRC's appeal against the Rangers tax case is to be heard in public, it has emerged.

The taxman had claimed that the scheme, which operated from 2001 to 2010 and saw £47.65m paid to players and staff in the form of tax-free loans, was illegal.

Rangers disputed HMRC's view and in November 2012 a First Tier Tax Tribunal ruled the scheme did not breach tax law. Two of the three judges hearing the case concluded that the EBT payments were loans, not earnings, and therefore not liable for income tax.

In February, HMRC was granted leave to appeal against the decision and the case will be heard at the Upper Tier Tax Tribunal over several days between January and March 2014.

On Friday it emerged that Colin Bishopp, the Upper Tribunal judge overseeing the Rangers case, had confirmed that all further hearings in the case will be made in public, despite the previous case being held in private.

Judge Bishopp said: 'It was common ground before me that the presumption is that tax appeals are heard in public, and with no concealment of identity or detail. I accept that, in the past, there was good reason to fear that the personal safety of certain individuals was threatened; but the information now before me indicates that the threats have abated and have probably disappeared.

'Even if the identities of some individuals were concealed in the First-tier Tribunal's decision, the nature of the issues was not.'

The original decision to keep the identities of those giving evidence in the case secret was fuelled by the 'strong feelings' that football can arouse and the fact that Strathclyde Police had been 'compelled to offer advice and protection to several individuals involved in RFC's affairs'

But he added: 'Perhaps because of such feelings, professional football clubs are often regarded as having a special status. In some respects that may be the correct view; but it should nevertheless not be overlooked that a modern professional football club is not a 'club', in the sense of an unincorporated association of members who join together in pursuit of a common purpose, but a commercial enterprise whose function is to generate profits for its shareholders.'

Having taken such a stance he said there was 'no reason why its tax affairs should not be as open to scrutiny as those of any other profit-making organisation'.

Judge Bishopp concluded: 'Any application for privacy, anonymity or redaction of detail must therefore be supported by the same type and quality of evidence as would be required of another taxpayer, and will be granted only for the same reasons.

He said that the HMRC employees who dealt with the case will be able to retain their anonymity in the Upper Tribunal hearing.

The revelation became public on Friday when the judge's directions, issued at an earlier preliminary hearing, were released, the Scotsman reports.