BN66 - the road to Judicial Review

[KiwiGuy]

This astounds me. The gloves have finally come off and HMRC stand there naked of any reasoned argument, 'we are the government, YOU DO WHAT WE SAY....', if they seriously think I'm going to pay up, whatever happens, they can f**k themselves. I'll do jail time first.

yep ill be in there with you too poppy

[Boycie]

Went along for another hour - managed to get in the upper gallery (I was in the middle with the stripey shirt) HMRC's guy was presenting. The four suits from the Revenue were busily looking through their tax manuals on the second row. I'll let others post the update but the main arguments seemed to be related to OECD's comments on DTA's and that they were not intended for an individual to avoid paying tax altogether and the other arguement seemed to be something along the lines of "it's up to parliament, not the courts". I'll let someone who was listening with more legal prowess provide a proper update.

[poppy01]

Went along for another hour - managed to get in the upper gallery (I was in the middle with the stripey shirt) HMRC's guy was presenting. The four suits from the Revenue were busily looking through their tax manuals on the second row. I'll let others post the update but the main arguments seemed to be related to OECD's comments on DTA's and that they were not intended for an individual to avoid paying tax altogether and the other arguement seemed to be something along the lines of "it's up to parliament, not the courts". I'll let someone who was listening with more legal prowess provide a proper update.

so they're making it up as they go along. shame they didnt look at these tax manuals 7 years ago.

[rosbiff]

Went along for another hour - managed to get in the upper gallery (I was in the middle with the stripey shirt)

I'm going down for the afternoon session. Looking on the old bailey website, it says you can't take mobile phones in !. Is that right ?

[TAF4]

The four suits from the Revenue were busily looking through their tax manuals on the second row.

Four suits today then. They only had two yesterday.

[TAF4]

I'm going down for the afternoon session. Looking on the old bailey website, it says you can't take mobile phones in !. Is that right ?

No problem taking it in but don't let it ring or be seen using it.

[portseven]

Went along for another hour - managed to get in the upper gallery (I was in the middle with the stripey shirt) HMRC's guy was presenting. The four suits from the Revenue were busily looking through their tax manuals on the second row. I'll let others post the update but the main arguments seemed to be related to OECD's comments on DTA's and that they were not intended for an individual to avoid paying tax altogether and the other arguement seemed to be something along the lines of "it's up to parliament, not the courts". I'll let someone who was listening with more legal prowess provide a proper update.

How did the Judge appear to be responding to all this?

[PlaneSailing]

Update

There's probably someone else writing an update as well as me, but I
know a lot of you are desperate for news....

The HMRC counsel continued this morning in very much the
same way as yesterday. He is driving the point about it's not so
much what the law says as what Parliament intended.

He also pointed out that in avoiding tax, the missing burden
is passed on to ordinary people who work 'say in the NHS', who
pay 'normal' levels of tax.

He then went on to cover the technical details of why the scheme
didn't work anyway. The majority of this was based around
the opinion that Milne gave to the SM lot. (section 739 concerning
transfer of assets, I'm sure someone will look that up for us!)

The technical note from yesterday was brought up, and he said
it didn't mean a great deal as the author of the note wasn't an expert,
so wasn't qualified to say that the scheme probably worked.

In a nutshell he is going for the 'social policy' angle and paying 'fair'
amounts of tax.

In the last half hour, our chap was back on. His argument was that
the 'broad brush' approach of the revenue doesn't wash and the court
must look at the details.

(BTW the HMRC counsel used this thread in his evidence so be carefull
what you post!)

[nuffsaid]

... arguments seemed to be related to OECD's comments on DTA's and that they were not intended for an individual to avoid paying tax altogether

I wonder when the OECD made this comment? If it was during their review of 'tax havens' in Oct 2008 then surely it can't used as it was after all this?

[SantaClaus]

hi all,

I've been working today, but got an update from one of the group.

The Revenue's case appears to be based on whether "fair balance" has been struck and whether the retrospection is proportionate. The case was presented in very general terms by Singh.

Our QC will be back on this afternoon and the case may continue tomorrow.

Thats all for now. Will keep you posted if I hear anything.