BN66 - the road to Judicial Review

[smalldog]

I have studied the survey of alleged hardship on the JCHR website and I have to say it all sounds a bit far fetched to me. Are marriages really breaking up, are people really suffering from depression? Hmmm, call me a sceptic and a cynic but I don’t buy it and neither will the rest of joe public.

Even if I suspend my disbelief for one moment and accept as fact that people are facing bankruptcy, losing their homes then isn’t this totally self-inflicted?

Surely if people were foolish enough to spend the money when HMRC were still carrying out enquiries, then aren’t they alone responsible for bringing this suffering on their families?

would u like a copy of my divorce papers, pm me if u dont believe it. yes its destroying lives, funny that who would have thought the threat of bankruptcy and spending the rest of your life trying to recover would have such an impact. how silly of us all...there will be blood if we lose and we will be able to prove it...this is no F**king game...

[Emigre]

I have studied the survey of alleged hardship on the JCHR website and I have to say it all sounds a bit far fetched to me. Are marriages really breaking up, are people really suffering from depression? Hmmm, call me a sceptic and a cynic but I don’t buy it and neither will the rest of joe public.

Even if I suspend my disbelief for one moment and accept as fact that people are facing bankruptcy, losing their homes then isn’t this totally self-inflicted?

Surely if people were foolish enough to spend the money when HMRC were still carrying out enquiries, then aren’t they alone responsible for bringing this suffering on their families?

Welcome to the forum Sceptic. I'd like to paint a picture. Yesterday, being a Saturday, you received a notice from HMRC telling you that they were investigating your tax return for the fiscal year 2007/08. The letter does not provide any details or any reasons. Nothing happens. In 12 months time you receive the same letter updated but again no information about why they disagree with your return. You now have 2 years worth of income under investigation dating back nearly 4 years (yes that's 10 months after end of year for you to submit and 12 months for them to notify you of their enquiry).

Please explain what you would have done in this time? You don't know what the enquiries are, what HMRC are doing (and in the case outlined it appears to be nothing), or what your potential liability will be including interest and penalties. Are you telling me that all that time ago you would have put your income into a deposit account in case this happened. You know and I know that you wouldn't have done so please don't be so arrogant as to suggest that the people who spent the money were foolish.

You will note the image above is just a 2/4 year window rather than the 7+ year window that is actually happening.

What I did was lawful at the time, HMRC have backed away from challenging this assertion - in fact by introducing retrospective legislation they have deprived me and those other people who acted lawfully of proving that fact. In other words they have breached my Human Rights.

Please tell me how you would feel if as the Government, because the economy is in such a bad way, I introduced a tax rate of 50% on all income above £20k, backdated by 5 years. Would you want to challenge that in Court? Would you have put that money aside in case it happened? Or would you have foolishly spent it?

By not challenging this kind of malicious legislation we will only have ourselves to blame when more of it is introduced in the future where it affects every man woman and child in the country. We have a right to certainty and to legitimate expectation, solid principles that have existed for centuries.

[silver_lining]

Foolish tolerance

......call me a sceptic

I can offer a few more pet names....

Et al,

We have another one of Jim Hendersons' creations crawled out the back door.

As such I would request you don't waste your time and intellect, just tolerate and ignore.

[OnYourBikeGB]

I have studied the survey of alleged hardship on the JCHR website and I have to say it all sounds a bit far fetched to me. Are marriages really breaking up, are people really suffering from depression? Hmmm, call me a sceptic and a cynic but I don’t buy it and neither will the rest of joe public.

Even if I suspend my disbelief for one moment and accept as fact that people are facing bankruptcy, losing their homes then isn’t this totally self-inflicted?

Surely if people were foolish enough to spend the money when HMRC were still carrying out enquiries, then aren’t they alone responsible for bringing this suffering on their families?

I think there's a few games being played on the forum at the moment. The above, first post, yep you're entitled to your opinion, but you really have no idea what you are talking about. You're right, you are a cynic and sceptic, as is your right, but people really are facing bankruptcy, families really under under stress. Some of us have had this hanging over us for many years, while watching the value of homes, the one thing that might have saved us, plummeting. If you think that doesn't affect someone, then nothing I can say is going to convince you, and I don't think you want to be convinced anyway. But then some people believe they have the moral high ground. The fact that they may be supporting legislation that has extremely extensive ramifications on UK business, and is in itself extremely morally and legally questionable, well that's up to them. Even if I wasn't in the scheme, I'd still be saying this law is wrong. And the smoke and mirrors, threats and deceptions used by Hector says a lot about the power of the state when they decide to have a go at Joe Public. At least we have been honest and open from day 1. Nothing hidden, no secrets, no lies.

Is it self-inflicted? I know if this had gone to court when Hector first complained, I could have afforded it. Did we heap years of interest on ourselves? Nope. Now I will struggle, but I am one of the lucky ones. HMRC ran away, then walked up behind us with a baseball bat. None of us asked for that. But I suspect your intention is really to goad, so I don't have anything else I want to say to you.

As for our other new friend, we all have a pretty good idea who you are. May I genuinely say that if you are indeed the individual we all think you are, I am sorry for any non-legal problems you have been going through. I wish no harm on anyone. However, you are playing with people who are facing similar problems in their lives. I for one know that I became involved following a powerful and convincing justification and description of the scheme by AJ. Yep, I entered into it of my own free will, and yep, I was naive to think anything could be that simple, but he convinced me on how safe the scheme that he claimed to design was, how at the very worst I wouldn't be any worse off than IR35. You can argue all you like about whether we have ourselves to blame or not, but you have no right playing games, without AJ and his excellent presentation skills, I wouldn't have been here. I may have walked up to the edge of my own free will, AJ enthusiastically convinced me it was safe to jump. In short, I'll pay the price for believing AJ. Enough damage has been done, even if we win.

Being an early member of the scheme, I was there when the bust-up with MTM occurred. I was emailed about moving over to Suo Moto. This led to a lot of confusion, I actually thought I was being asked to reregister. I remember also the very first court date with AJ and MTM. AJ claimed he had a good day in court (yep, I saw the circular). I read the case notes, if it was me I'd have been crapping myself. But maybe we just have different definitions of good days. Or maybe it was just a mind game and leopards don't change their spots. Who knows?

As for how HRMC got our names, it really doesn't matter. They have them. Might even be a good thing. At least we know we're in the fight, and we're stronger together in the spotlight that hiding alone in the dark. This forum and the incredible work done by DR et al so far is testament to that. Win or lose, we have been a real pain in the ar*e.

If AJ has a grudge with MTM/Montpelier, go get them in court, don't try to do it through us. I'm sure more knowledgeable minds than mine could detail the results of all the cases so far. It'd shed a bit of light on the potential motivation of some of the comments.

The bottom line is we have an extremely strong case and stand a good chance of winning. Our legal team is strong, HMRC are on the back foot. They are very far from invincible. They are on very dodgy ground. We have been truthful, open and honest throughout. They have lied, hid and misled. Is there 'facts' to come out? There may be, but I doubt very much if HMRC would share them with AJ. Anything else is most likely already known to Montpelier. I'm not going to be played by anyone with another agenda, what will be will be. If we lose, some people will have a good old smug laugh, they'll have got their own back on some perceived wrong or at the at the tax dodgers getting their come-uppance and when you come a cropper in your so-far blemishless lives others will do the same to you. If we win then we can get on with their lives and try to put this nightmare behind us. Either way, AJ and the sceptics will mean as little to me as they do right now.

[SantaClaus]

Something tells me that bn66sceptic/HMRC troll has crawled back into his hole for now.

Hide there quietly, because the bloodhounds are coming to hunt you down and sniff out the truth.

[PlaneSailing]

Echoes of amnesia

I have studied the survey of alleged hardship on the JCHR website and I have to say it all sounds a bit far fetched to me. Are marriages really breaking up, are people really suffering from depression? Hmmm, call me a sceptic and a cynic ....

Mr/s Sceptic
I find it hard to believe anyone would
feign mental illness to gain sympathy
or preferential treatment.

[DonkeyRhubarb]

To all the sceptics and cynics out there

This is the 4th thread of the BN66 forum. The total number of posts during the past 18 months is over 7,500.

This thread has already been viewed just short of 150,000 times. The previous thread was viewed 300,000 times.

Do you really think people would be wasting so much time on this if they had the money on one side to pay the bill?

8 years is a long time and not only do people's circumstances change but the world has changed. Since 2000 there has been a huge contraction in the IT sector, and many contractors I know have seen their rates slashed and have had to contend with long periods out of work.

During this period, we have had 2 stock market crashes, a global recession and a property slump.

A significant number of people have also lost assets through divorce and have had to start their lives all over again. The divorce courts certainly wouldn't take a "virtual" liability from HMRC into account when dividing the spoils.

HMRC cried wolf year after year saying they were going to take us to the Commissioners, and it's not surprising that after a while people simply stopped taking any notice.

[smalldog]

Im not sure what planet Sceptic is on but yes being hounded by a government body for what in most peoples cases is a six figure sum is pretty F***ing stressful. This isnt ten grand were talking here, and as DR says things have changed a lot, lots of contractors are permies now, just making ends meet while supporting a family. There seems to be this impression were all fat cats with wads of cash sloshing around and just dont want to pay, if only!!!!

The £200m quoted will not be realised I guarantee it, that figure is based losely on peoples ability to pay, but a lot of us dont have it....wait and see if we lose...HMRC are pissing in the wind if they think they can bank £200m off the back of this legislation...

running up a debt with 8 years punitive interest is just obscene...remember even if we had put it all away in a safe account somewhere thinking one day it might be retrospectively taxed the interest we would have earnt would not have kept track with HMRC's 8%...and to give you an example of what you are suggesting we did:

why dont you put away 10% of your current salary just in case HMRC decide in years to come that the PAYE tax rate has changed and not just moving forwards. They have decided to change the PAYE basic rate of tax retrospectively back 8 years and are charging you interest, so you better start saving!!!! This is effectively whats happened to us, seem fair to you??

[Alan Jones]

This is alan Jones

Mr/s Sceptic
I find it hard to believe anyone would
feign mental illness to gain sympathy
or preferential treatment.

Please note that there are posters/"imposters" out there [maybe within the normal BN66 crowd] who are trying to incite other forum users against me.

I have been reading threads on this website since 2000.

My take/opinion on BN66 is very simple

(A) Retrospective tax legislation is wrong.

(B) The scheme that was closed did not work and HMRC could have successfully challenged it (In fact i have it in "black and white" that if HMRC lose the JR they will challenge the scheme through the "proper route")

(C) Suo Motu settlement was done in best interests of clients based on the facts available at the time. To answer cynics who say clients "were sold down the river". It would have been the easiest "sell" to carry on and continue to take fees from them (just as other scheme promoters did).

(C) Anyone who joined the scheme post 2003 should have been made aware that there were opinions from Tax Counsel that said the scheme did not work in the same way that there were opinions that said it did.

(D) I am one of the few people who can genuinely feel what you guys are going through. I suffer from Bi-polar disorder and will have to take medication for the rest of my life. However I am not mental/insane. I have suffered divorce. I have a mentally handicapped daughter. I have lived with prospect of bankruptcy for over 8 years

(e) If you lose JR there still is a way to get round the retrospective element. See bn66.co.uk (this site has nothing to do with me).

Wishing you all a Merry Xmas and a prosperous and peaceful new year.

Regards

[ContractIn]

I have studied the survey of alleged hardship on the JCHR website and I have to say it all sounds a bit far fetched to me. Are marriages really breaking up, are people really suffering from depression? Hmmm, call me a sceptic and a cynic but I don’t buy it and neither will the rest of joe public.

Even if I suspend my disbelief for one moment and accept as fact that people are facing bankruptcy, losing their homes then isn’t this totally self-inflicted?

Surely if people were foolish enough to spend the money when HMRC were still carrying out enquiries, then aren’t they alone responsible for bringing this suffering on their families?

I have been offline for the last few days and catching up on the recent posts. I don't post too much but then I came across this one. I am sure there will be more responses.

I was in the scheme for 2.5 years and never received any warnings from HMRC or otherwise that the scheme or I could be under investigation. I was only made aware about BN66 and its ramifications after I had left MTM. I have to say on the day it was passed I was physically sick due to stress and worry. I certainly face losing my home or being forced to sell.

You clearly know no one affected by this. God knows what personal state I would be in if my potential liability was 5 years or more. It would certainly ruin me financially.

I don't want joe publics sympathy but do not underestimate the impact this is having on individuals.