BN66 - the road to Judicial Review

[MuddyFunster]

Question - have any of your guys logged onto the Government gateway lately? I just logged if to file my SA and it says I owe nothing - not a bean, no interest nothing.....???
Strange as I had a nice letter (CN) from HMRC 22/12/2008 saying I owed 65k and I had 30 days pay..MP did the business for me...what a nice Xmas I had in 2008. NOT
I haven't had anything lately from HMRC except a nice letter saying that I am under investigation for my 2007/2008 SA now....Boring

Yes, I'm in the same boat as you. Previously had a rather large number staring at me on the page, but now it says I don't owe them anything. I had hoped this was because I'd won the HMRC Xmas Lottery, but if you have the same thing, two of us can't have won it, surely???

[silver_lining]

I find it totally hilarious posts from a public forum were used in HMRC's defense!!!! thats amazing, they could be posts from some lunatic pretending to be on the scheme, or god forbid they could be from someone malicious trying to influence the outcome, not mentioning any names of course...... How on earth can they be credible submissions?? Im surprised the judge didnt laugh Singh out of court to be honest....

You know even if we lose the JR on the grounds of ECHR, now that the judge ruled it as not being a clarification could the commissioners actually enforce it, as it has now been classified as retrospective...??

I think the post was something along the lines of ....

'..yeah we all know its risky........<SINGH cuts here> .......not because the scheme doesn't work but because of our government and its leglistative processes cannot be trusted to provide certainty in the UK tax system ' ....

Yours sincerely
S. Timms.

[BrilloPad]

It amazes me that hearsay would be allowed in a court - what if HMRC made those posts? That just can't be taken seriously.

How weak must their case be?

I hope the read out the one that the police spoke to me about.

[BrilloPad]

i aaddressed your HMRC Q b4 u posted - but my posts get vetted & therefore there is a delay for e.g. i am writing this at 7.30pm.

my position is exactly same as you expect my nemesis is not HMRC . I admire the never say die spirit because i will fight my cause to the bitter end.

However for me to win my appeal and save me going bankrupt, R u worried about making some poor inspector redundant or bankrupt. Answer is - if it saves yur skin NO . How many of you have had contracts designing HMRC systems - did you refuse the work on ***** . NO .

The only person fighting for me is me.

Why are you worried about bankruptcy? Always a bed for you in the looney bin.

Only reason you ever had any money was ripping off montpelier's idea. You hang off the coat-tails of others. You are a leech. Both in behaviour and looks.

[BrilloPad]

Just to wish all you guys the best - long term lurker interested in case...

I hope HMRC gets whats coming to them

Welcome to the forum and thanks for joining. Any more lurkers out there?

[helen7]

Why are you worried about bankruptcy? Always a bed for you in the looney bin.

OK, lets call an end to the name calling now. Jones is out for himself and is trying to do a deal with HMRC; so we know he can't be trusted.

If any of you are compelled to reply to his posts or send him a private message; please be very careful what you say.

[OneUnited]

Thanks to all who have got us this far

Like so many, many hundreds/thousands?? of people involved with the MP scheme we are totally in debt to everyone who have taken the time and effort in out quest against HMRC with special thanks to DR, I really can't say thank you enough.
I joined the scheme in 2003 and to be honest have been a bit of a coward by not getting involved sooner but AJ sent me over the top, so some good has come out of his mad rants, I am with you all the way now.

[SantaClaus]

The 1987 Padmore legislation only applied to UK resident partners of offshore partnerships. In its strict interpretation, it can't apply to us because we were not partners or members of a firm.

However, this is where the so-called clarification comes in. HMRC want the court to believe that Parliament always intended the legislation to have a wider scope than this, which they say would have included beneficiaries of a trust. This is just wishful thinking, and at the end of the day the law is the law.

In any case, if HMRC had genuinely believed this had been the intention of Parliament then they would have said so in their Manual, and they would have expressed it long before 2007.

Thanks DR. This is as I thought.

I look forward to seeing Timms, MrYouknowWho (TM) and HMRC locked up in the Tower of London.

Maybe Her Majesty will put them in the stocks so I can throw rotten apples at them too.

[Tax_shouldnt_be_taxing]

Thought for the night

I've been speaking to a Barrister friend this evening about this. The upshot was this:

BN66 applies retrospectively to Padmore legislation.
MTM scheme is not Padmore as per comments made from what the Judge noted and was never referenced by HMRC until 2008.
If there were communications in early 2000's which had opinions that the scheme did not work then that would suffice to be tested via litigation so why was it not unless this is unfounded or unlikely to be successful? And Note 63 supports this.
If Parliament "intended" 1987 to apply to a wider scope, then HMRC would have known that this discretion applied in 2001 and could therefore have applied it via litigation or moved to have it enacted via legislation at the beginning.
Scale of use does not carry since all laws which apply to individuals (namely personal tax) is just that - singular. There is no case to ignore a breach of law by one until it is breached by many. Self Assessment legislation concerns the individual not the collective and the case here is against an individual (Huitson). This view was derived from employment law.
Whether the scheme worked or not is not in legal contention. It is the fact that HMRC never did (or have since) proved this one way or the other despite their claims to do so via the Commissioners. If it is determined that this is not a Padmore case then even allowing some flexibility of "intention", HMRC failed to exercise their obligations to apply this discretion at many points in time.
Forum evidence - If it became necessary to subpoena a forum member to cross examine their comments, who are you going to subpoena? Santa?
Transparency - the whole point of SA.

In short, he does not see how this case holds up to scrutiny other than the larger story of tax avoidance and what it means to future case law. There are perhaps more politics than law in play here but on the evidence as it is seen, the date from which this scheme did not work was 12th March 2008 as per element 2 of BN66. Element 1 on retrospection merely clarifies the Padmore status. If our scheme is to be now brought in scope then this implies the 1987 legislation has been modified to allow it (at the discretion of Parliament) and is therefore a new law which supercedes 1987 and therefore is in conflict via retrospection of Article 1 Protocol 1.

[Tax_shouldnt_be_taxing]

An Analogy

Missed this bit from my Barrister friend who works in employment law. If an employee kept taking sickies over a number of years and this was know to his bosses and HR and whilst they didn't approve of it and often reminded him of that fact, they allowed it to happen as it did not impact the company overall, then after a few years more and more employees started to do the same until a point was reached where the management said "enough is enough".

So they get together in the boardroom and realise that all these sickies are having a big impact on the company profits. So they send out a misconduct letter to all of them and tell them that their pay will be doct for each day they took a sickie.

So the bloke who as an individual (call him Huitson) did this for a number of years and knowingly to his bosses suddenly finds himself getting a load of money taken away because of the behaviour of others when all along his bosses never once implied that it would happen seems a little less than fair and proportionate not least as some who started at this late in the day will be far less penalised. Huitson has been discriminated against on the basis that the scale of the sickies determines how far back the penalty goes and he had no knowledge nor control of the other individuals behaviour.

Scale cannot be used as an argument as it implies plural. And the behaviour is relevant to the individual. Just as in personal tax.