BN66 - Round 2 (Court of Appeal)

[Squicker]

In the pub celebrating? Or face down in the Thames?

[swede]

In the pub celebrating? Or face down in the Thames?

...or banged up having accosted men in nylon suits for lying their faces off.

[Morlock]

...or banged up having accosted men in nylon suits for lying their faces off.

[smalldog]

put em all in orange uniforms, leg irons and ship em off to guantanamo bay! thats what they deserve after all these lies and coverups...

[TheBarCapBoyz]

Agreed BarCapBoyz "retrospection could have been anticipated" seemed to be one of Parkers main points. I don't agree with Parker in how could we have anticipated retro since HMRC did not make us aware of Padmore until 2008, late 2008 in my case. Even then I don't remember them mentioning Padmore was retro and as a number of posters have said it might have been a retro act but was never enforced retrospectively. It would be nice to have consistancy with Padmore with no retrospective application in our case. Surely that would be equitable.

One question BarCapBoyz - what were the previous challenges to retrospection that lost? Where these taxation?

It's all here...

http://taxjournal.com/tj/articles/an...an-rights-s-45

[TheBarCapBoyz]

Playing Scum's Advocate

I agree with previous postings that no-one in a million years would have thought they would legislate retrospectively, but, I don't believe that's the issue.

It almost seems to be that the law is saying, if you're clever enough to use this loophole to avoid tax, you ought to be clever enough to be aware, thanks to Padmore and other cases, of the *possibility* of retrospection, no matter how obscure or irrelevant that piece of case law may be.

And it is the existence of that (albeit remote) possibility that dictates that the retrospection is [just about, by the skin of its teeth] proportional, and therefore not in violation of A1P1.

That is kind of what I expect the scum to argue...

[TheBarCapBoyz]

Of course the counter-argument to this is that, since every piece of tax legislation exists within this domain, you could argue that *any* tax law could be changed retrospectively in situations where taxpayers are using the law in a way "not intended by parliament", which is why the scum are licking their lips, and the entire tax planning industry is praying it is defeated.

[slogger]

Of course the counter-argument to this is that, since every piece of tax legislation exists within this domain, you could argue that *any* tax law could be changed retrospectively in situations where taxpayers are using the law in a way "not intended by parliament", which is why the scum are licking their lips, and the entire tax planning industry is praying it is defeated.

Argument from link to tax journal seems to suggest that retrospection can be applied to artificial arrangements ... What's artificial ffs - anything done within the law, out in the open and without duplicity is surely legitimate and not artificial..

[Squicker]

Argument from link to tax journal seems to suggest that retrospection can be applied to artificial arrangements ... What's artificial ffs - anything done within the law, out in the open and without duplicity is surely legitimate and not artificial..

I don't think that could be argued. One could be completely transparent about being artificial.

[Tax_shouldnt_be_taxing]

Of course the counter-argument to this is that, since every piece of tax legislation exists within this domain, you could argue that *any* tax law could be changed retrospectively in situations where taxpayers are using the law in a way "not intended by parliament", which is why the scum are licking their lips, and the entire tax planning industry is praying it is defeated.

And in here lies the conundrum. To be clear, if something you do today is legal in written law but disliked by the authorities becase it's "artificial", "aggressive" and the like then becomes illegal tomorrow such that is was illegal before, then the possibilities are endless. The record is well and truly broken on this point but it's an important one - If you're 100% transparent in what you do and it's legal and the authorities take 7 years to act, why penalise those who were transparent rather than stuffing the mob who did nowt for those years? Frankly what should it matter whether something is artificial or not? If it's legal and disclosed then if Hector feels that strongly about it he should use the tools available and stop it there and then. Otherwise we have a situation like ours where they don't need to do a thing for 6 or 7 years then simply apply retrospective legislation and get the bag of goodies.

It's a sorry state of affairs but in our case, retrospection has been used for one simple reason only - to get Hector off the hook for not having a clue what to do for 7 years and were being payed for that. So don't worry about their claims of "moving swiftly" to close loopholes. It's better to let the deficit mount for a few years then use the loss to the Exchequer line to justify retrospection. If HMRC was a private company, there'd be nobody working there as they'd all be fired for gross incompetence. But don't worry, we're all in it together according to the Government. Yeah right.