BN66 - the road to Judicial Review

[DonkeyRhubarb]

!!! BREAKING NEWS !!!

The Judgement will be handed down tomorrow morning (Thursday 28th January @ 9.30)

COURT 10
Before MR JUSTICE KENNETH PARKER
Thursday 28 January, 2010
At half past 9
FOR JUDGMENT
HAND DOWN
CO/10012/2008 The Queen on the application of Huitson v HM Revenue & Customs

The Judgement will be posted on this new thread:

http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...ement-day.html







Section 58 FA 2008 - Support Group Forum

Contact Email Address
Any questions, drop me a line at
[email protected]

The following information is correct as of 27th January 2010

Recent updates will be highlighted in red

This is a forum for people affected by the legislation first announced in Budget Note 66 (BN66) in March 2008. The legislation was included in the 2008 Finance Bill as Clause 55, and subsequently enacted as Section 58.

The legislation attacks a number of schemes, including:
Montpelier
de Graaf Resources
Steed Solutions

This thread is a continuation of the previous thread:

http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...apter-3-a.html

Highlights:

• Montpelier applied for a Judicial Review, which was intitially refused but has now been granted following an oral hearing.
• The Judicial Review took place on 19th & 20th January 2010. See forum for comments and opinions. We are now waiting for the judgement to be handed down in the next few weeks. This should be before end of Feb.
• PwC applied for a JR on behalf of mainly property developer clients but it was refused because their application was deemed to be late
• Although initially PwC were going to join our JR, they have decided to pursue their action using a different argument than Human Rights - something to do with the European Treaty. They have an oral hearing in the Court of Appeal in March 2010.
• It was rumoured that deGraaf had also applied for a JR but this has not been confirmed
• Steed have applied to take a case directly to the European Court of Human Rights.
• It is estimated that 2500 contractors are affected by the legislation.
• According to a recent survey carried out for the Joint Committee on Human Rights, hundreds will be financially ruined if HMRC get their way
• The majority of the 1500 users of the Montpelier scheme have now received Closure Notices, which have been appealed and HMRC have agreed to suspend payment.
• HMRC have made countless mistakes, including issuing Distraint and Surcharge Notices when CNs have already been appealed, and in several cases sending round the Debt Collection heavy mob after appeals had been accepted. HMRC even applied for a warrant from the Sherrifs Court in Scotland to sieze one poor chap's house!!!

Joint Committee on Human Rights
A group of people on the forum wrote to their MPs asking them to approach the JCHR requesting they scrutinise s58. The JCHR asked for evidence of the impact the retrospective tax would have on people's lives. A survey was carried out and 92 witness testimonies were presented to them. On the strength of this, they agreed to examine the legislation.

Current status of JCHR inquiry
The JCHR have written a report on section 58 which is highly critical.
http://www.publications.parliament.u...3/13304.htm#a5

They have also written to Stephen Timms asking the Government to justify it.
http://www.publications.parliament.u...3/13308.htm#a6

Timms' reply to the JCHR:
http://forums.contractoruk.com/924670-post498.html

The JCHR will meet, after the summer recess, on Tuesday 13th October to discuss their next move.

The Committee have decided not to pursue the matter any further. More details here:
http://forums.contractoruk.com/977877-post799.html

If you're not happy with this, then why not make your views known to them.
http://forums.contractoruk.com/977963-post802.html

Write to your MP
Around 200 of us have written to our MPs over the past 6 months. MPs have made representations to the Government but the Government have refused to answer any of our questions. Now that the JR has been granted, the Government are refusing to comment, so there is not much point in writing further letters at this time.

Message to all newcomers:
Please don't lurk, feel free to join in the discussion. All contributions welcome.

FAQ - Certificate of Tax Deposit (CTD)
http://forums.contractoruk.com/685539-post110.html
http://forums.contractoruk.com/699696-post427.html
http://forums.contractoruk.com/737219-post891.html

HMRC Links
Certificate of Tax Deposit
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/payinghmrc/cert-tax-deposit.htm
Interest rates for late payment
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/interest-late.htm

From September 2009, HMRC are using a new formula for calculating interest. For late payment it will be bank base rate + 2.5%. See below.

http://www.taxationweb.co.uk/tax-new...e-formula.html

Estimated Accrued Interest

The following percentages are an estimate of the total interest accrued up to June 2009 for each tax year.

Tax Year..........Accrued Interest
2001/2....................46%
2002/3....................40%
2003/4....................34%
2004/5....................26%
2005/6....................20%
2006/7....................12%
2007/8....................4.5%

Government Gateway
You can register here to monitor the status of your tax returns eg. to check if closure notice appeals have been accepted.
https://online.hmrc.gov.uk/registration/individual

[smalldog]

any ideas when we will find out when the JR will take place??

[sgee]

At least there is one!

just a quick thankyou to DR for all the effort - I stopped reading for a while as I couldn't take the stress and so put my head down a hole for a while. But got the letter last night, and very pleased to see both the JR and the Committee review moving fwd. Lets hope we can get a fair shot after all!

[BrilloPad]

Now any newcomers cannot use the "I am not reading through 300 pages" as an excuse for not joining!

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Correction to interest estimates

I have had to revise the figures upwards because my original estimates didn't take into consideration that interest starts accruing from the due date of the payments on account, not the deadline for filing the return.

Take for example tax year 2001/2.

Although the return date is 31st Jan 2003, payments on account are due Jan 2002 and Aug 2002. Interest accrues from these payment dates not the date of the return.

This increases the accrued interest for 2001/2 from 43% to approx 46%.

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Expense claims of HMRC

The BBC released expenses of its senior management today. Apparently, after the MPs debacle, a lot of public bodies will come under pressure to release details of expense claims.

If HMRC continue to frustrate my attempts to obtain s58 info under FOI, then the next FOI request I submit will be for the expenses of their top management:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/board/index.htm

Followed, of course, by our "friends" in Salford.

I've got one request in with the Treasury, for everything BN66 related, that I'm fighting over. They are currently claiming it's not in the public interest to release the documents!!!

The most recent request HMRC rejected was on cost grounds:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...es_of_meetings

Below is a list of the current open requests:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques..._attended_by_m
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...evenue_customs
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...nded_by_dave_h
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/bn66_foi_guidance
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...eetings_oct_07

There is plenty of time between now and the JR to keep chipping away at the buggers.

[BrilloPad]

The most recent request HMRC rejected was on cost grounds:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...es_of_meetings

Why is it that all requests costs £600 and is therefore too expensive? Is it a conspiracy?

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Why is it that all requests costs £600 and is therefore too expensive? Is it a conspiracy?

The Freedom of Information Act provides for authorities to reject requests which would cost more than £600. Apparently, this equates to one person spending 3½ working days.

[silver_lining]

The Freedom of Information Act provides for authorities to reject requests which would cost more than £600. Apparently, this equates to one person spending 3½ working days.

Some, in fact I would say a lot of FOI request would ordinarily take longer than 3.5 days.

As such there has to be a method to resolve this. Like everything I am sure money can sort it...

I have read the requests previously and I believe the laws around the FOI are constructed or rather can be manipulated in such a way that it can become another bureaucratic spirit breaker. I have no doubt there are clever ways to request this data while putting them in a corner with no option but to supply....

The one annoying thing is that they can of course just say nothing actually exists or was recorded. It naturally leads on to speculation that it may be the truth and hence raises questions about how they came to certain conclusions.... if it does exist and they are simply denying it does or more worryingly 'thinking' it was not relevant only to produce it in court later on

DR, have your poured over the FOI legals to evaluate all options?

Might it be worth engaging a lawyer or asking MP for help via their legals?

[bollox]

Alistair Darling/Timms etc have stated numerous times both in parliament and in writing that "Human Rights Legislation" was fully taken into consideration in creating the legislation for S58....

but if we later discover through FOI or JCHR that no consideration was actually made....

doesnt this leave the government wide open for a legal attack, in that this legislation was at best incompetently drafted and at worst possibly maliciously drafted (ie they knew it contravened European Law but were using it as a scare tactic)

Obviously lets focus on the task at hand ie winning the JR etc but does anyone think there's a further case to answer and possible litigation...

don't get me wrong, I get as narked as anyone by some of the HR stuff you see in the papers, but if we've got the situation where peoples lives/nerves/marriages have been destroyed by this legislation then surely some recompense is due