BN66 - Time to fight back!!!

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Judicial Review

Some Info on Judicial Reviews that I found. Make up your own minds.

England and Wales

Main article: Judicial review in English Law

Judicial review is a procedure in English administrative law by which English courts supervise the exercise of public power. A person who feels that an exercise of such power by, say, a government minister, the local council or a statutory tribunal, is unlawful, perhaps because it has violated his or her rights, may apply to the Administrative Court (a division of the High Court) for judicial review of the decision. If the application for judicial review is successful, the Court may set aside (quash) the unlawful act. In certain limited circumstances, the Claimant may be able to obtain damages. A court may also make a mandatory or prohibitory order or an injunction to compel the authority to act lawfully or to stop it from acting unlawfully.

Unlike the United States and some other jurisdictions, English law does not know judicial review of primary legislation (laws passed by Parliament), save in limited circumstances where primary legislation is contrary to EU law (see Factortame). Although the Courts can review primary legislation to determine its compatibility with the Human Rights Act 1998, they have no power to quash or suspend the operation of an enactment which is found to be incompatible with the European Convention of Human Rights - they can merely declare that they have found the enactment to be incompatible.

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EU Law winning over National Law

This may not be directly comparable to our case, but thought it interesting anyway. Not sure if MP would fight in the courts for 10 years for us. Read below:

The Factortame case is a landmark decision in United Kingdom (UK) and European Union (EU) law, which confirmed the supremacy of European Union law over national law in the areas where the EU has competence. The decision, which formed part of a lengthy litigation battle comprising numerous judgments spread over a period of more than ten years, raised a number of issues which are of particular constitutional significance in the debate in the UK over the purported erosion of parliamentary supremacy. The two most important judgments were delivered in 1990 and 1991 and are known respectively as Factortame I and Factortame II. The judgment in the second appeal before the House of Lords is part of the United Kingdom's uncodified body of constitutional law.

[arandomname]

Like Poppy, I'm waiting for the bill
from Hector too.

Has anyone recieved a closure notice yet
or are we in a Mexican stand off with
HMRC waiting for us to send them
'correct' SA forms?

(p.s. First post & standing firm!)

Having recently spoken to MP, I was told that they didn't expect notices to be sent before the middle of September (for several reasons, including the bods at HMRC being on holiday).

[arandomname]

but wish to highlight your post to the forum as this did not appear when I was browsing yesterday, so not quite sure whether all will have seen this and would be keen for general consensus?
Cheers

That seems to be an annoying feature for noob posters - our messages have to be approved before being posted but still go out with the timestamp when they were submitted, so a delay in being approved can mean the message disappears in previous pages.

[kiwinlondon]

I spoke to a good friend whose a tax lawyer, he explained to me that the judicial review is to look at the content of the legislation. What was it supposed to do and its common law implementation...

The revenue have said that the "clarification" was to clear up any woollyness..and this is what MP are arguing... that they never intended this from the start and in fact only came up with it for this years finance bill....
So they will need to demonstrate this to the court...

He also looked into the legislation and agreed with me that the revenue would need something a little stronger than that as a defence..... but he did point out that court rulings can be a lottery but in his opinion the revenue didnt have a strong case.

He also pointed out to me that the revenue have a poor recent history of winning court cases..they have struggled to put together strong arguements to convince courts.

He also mentioned that the revenue will try the divide and conquer approach.. try and get us much money from people as possible and scare as many as they can...

I'll be surprised if anyone gets any letter for the next few months....

[bhavvy]

Norla

Hi,
Im a newbie lurker who would like to know if anybody is using Norla. Norla don't seem to be passing me much info saying that they are not the ones being investigated but the actual IOM company (Edge). They are still touting for new business under their existing arrangement ! I presume this is similar to MP who were initially investigated. Does anyone know any more info on the Norla position ? or shall I start a new thread for Norla.

Er, just for solidarity, I will be fighting my position against HMRC as legally as I can ! Not had a single threatening letter, even though I've been with Norla for over 5 years.

BigBad

[BrilloPad]

ASB, thanks for the clarification, hopefully you are correct with the the legal interpretation. As stated in my post I am happy to be proved incorrect. I will find the documentation I located on the topic and let everyone on the forum have a read.

I am going to speak to the department of justice here in the next few days and determine what chance I have to fight an extradition in relation to a retrospective law. I will update the forum on what I find.

I spoke to Tony Quinn at MP about 6 weeks ago as I had not received any info on the progress and I was still getting threatening info from HMRC regarding requests for my accounts. Anyway he believed that HMRC would either pursue some of the contractors who owed them a lot of money (been in the scheme since the beginning) and see what resistance they got or they would be more bullish and issue closure notices on every one. I believe they will try the latter as a shock tactic and see how many people pay up. Some people obviously will pay up, and the less of us there are, the easier we will be to pick off, even MP may be less likely to defend depending on how many clients are left.

Can members keep the forum updated on any closure notices that come through. I would be interested to know when they will be coming. Does anyone have a source in the media, maybe if we can bring this into the public domain/spotlight it may put pressure on HMRC to back down on pursuing this.

I think if the human rights angle is used and the story focuses in on a member who is in financial hardship as a result of this retrospective clarification it may definitely heat things up for HMRC a little. Everyone loves to hate the tax man.

So far I have only heard of 1 closure notice - not from someome who posts here (but might be a lurker).

I have GREAT media contacts - but 1 thing Mal was right on was that is is very very hard to spin this in a positive way. Remember once the story is in the public domain you have a tiger by the tail(e.g. look at the McCanns). And anyway - HMRC do not care about the media. They are loathed - they love it!

However I think the media might love a story about how a group of people, for reasons unspcified, caused misery and terror to a certain HMRC inspector (you know who I mean - hello ). In fact I have a friend who specializes in filming such japes...

[BolshieBastard]

Parliament's authority on a budget finance bill, amendment or associated Statutory Instrument, is supreme. Not even the House of Lords, the highest court in the land can overturn a budget bill which BN 66 is.

Hence my reluctance to believe a judicial challenge will sway the government.

[Grim Reaper]

Ctd

Have to admit I almost settled up early as I can't be doing with the hassle. If the money is not secure it ain't worth having.
But instead I have just sent my first cheque off for a CTD.
Not much else I can do as I do not have an offset mortgage.
If things do not swing our way this year i would of saved approx 3 months interest ! Yippeee !

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Hi,
Im a newbie lurker who would like to know if anybody is using Norla. Norla don't seem to be passing me much info saying that they are not the ones being investigated but the actual IOM company (Edge). They are still touting for new business under their existing arrangement ! I presume this is similar to MP who were initially investigated. Does anyone know any more info on the Norla position ? or shall I start a new thread for Norla.

Er, just for solidarity, I will be fighting my position against HMRC as legally as I can ! Not had a single threatening letter, even though I've been with Norla for over 5 years.

BigBad

I have heard of Norla but weren't aware that they were using a similar solution.

The MP scheme uses partnership/trust in the IoM and relies on the UK-IoM double taxation treaty to avoid paying tax on the trust income.

Is this the same as the Norla/Edge arrangement?