BN66 - Court of Appeal and beyond

[SantaClaus]

Yes. If you cannot agree you have the right to appeal to the general or special commissioners.

HM Revenue & Customs: How to appeal against an HMRC decision - direct tax

Decisions related to other taxpayers do not bind any other taxpayer.

Guess they'll be wanting to try and change the rules there then.

Sorry for being a cynical old git, comes with age

Interesting that if the appeal fails at the "First Tier Tribunal", it can then be taken to the "Upper Tribunal" if they:

- did not correctly apply or interpret the law.
- made a procedural error.
- had no evidence, or not enough evidence, to support their decision.
- did not provide proper and adequate reasons for their decision in the written statement.

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg...ype=RESOURCES.

[Thenobbler]

Discovery

There seems to be a lot of confusion about enquiries and closure notices, so let me try and clarify this.

Enquiry

An enquiry is a letter saying they are opening enquiries into your tax return. It should refer to Section 9a TMA 1970, although it might also mention Code of Practice 8.

Closure Notice

A Closure Notice is the thing that Montp appealed on your behalf. It should refer to Section 28A(1) & (2) TMA 1970, and it will detail the amendments they have made to your return and tell you your right of appeal.

What to look for

HMRC should have opened an enquiry within 12 months of the date a return was filed. If the enquiry was outside this window then this will be challenged by Montp at a tax tribunal at the end of the current legal process.

If a CN was issued and there had been no prior enquiry whatsoever then HMRC have already conceded with one person that this is not valid and the CN was withdrawn. The same would apply if they opened an enquiry after the CN.

That's very helpful, thank you. In my case (sorry if I've missed an earlier post answering this) my first contact on the matter of my £100k 'owing' from Hector was a Discovery notice dated July 2009 and bearing on tax years 2004/05 and 2005/06 (having clearly missed the S9a date by a country mile). Presumably MTM (as I think they still were at the time?) will have made the nature of the scheme's completely legal tax avoidance utterly clear on the returns in question, which makes the use of a Discovery Notice invalid?

Or am I clutching too hard at the straw in question?

[DonkeyRhubarb]

That's very helpful, thank you. In my case (sorry if I've missed an earlier post answering this) my first contact on the matter of my £100k 'owing' from Hector was a Discovery notice dated July 2009 and bearing on tax years 2004/05 and 2005/06 (having clearly missed the S9a date by a country mile). Presumably MTM (as I think they still were at the time?) will have made the nature of the scheme's completely legal tax avoidance utterly clear on the returns in question, which makes the use of a Discovery Notice invalid?

Or am I clutching too hard at the straw in question?

Montpelier have said they will challenge the use of "discovery" in the tax courts if the current legal process is unsuccessful.

HMRC are unlikely to concede this as readily as they have done for CNs with no prior enquiries because they have made extensive use of discovery notices. If they climbed down on this point it would cost them many £millions.

I don't know what the prospects are but you are certainly not clutching at straws.

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Need your help

Does anyone have a local Member of Parliament who sits on the Public Accounts Committee?

Public Accounts Committee - membership - UK Parliament

My preference would be for the chair Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking.

Thanks
DR

[Doug1965]

Chasing offshore tax 'dodgers'

From the BBC : BBC News - On the trail of the offshore tax dodgers

Interesting quote concerning HMRC staffing levels :

Greg Skyte says each case will be assessed, and if there is reasonable evidence the person has been less than frank they will receive further scrutiny.

But he admits that his department will not have the staff or resources to, for instance, call in all 6,000 people on the HSBC list for a grilling.

"It just isn't practical to issue letters inviting each and every one of those to come in," he says.

"We don't have the resource, short term, to take forward enquiries on such a scale. But we will ask questions on a significant number of those cases."

[johnnyguitar]

From the BBC : BBC News - On the trail of the offshore tax dodgers

Interesting quote concerning HMRC staffing levels :

- they need to hire a few contractors to help with the volume of work

[BrilloPad]

HMRC are unlikely to concede this as readily as they have done for CNs with no prior enquiries because they have made extensive use of discovery notices. If they climbed down on this point it would cost them many £millions.

They would just retrospectively change the law anyway.

[Disgusted of Coventry]

if you look at the top of the page you will see the voting count on a request that I set up for a PR campaign, the very thing you say is lacking.

Sorry, bve534! I didn't mean to cause offence. I just wanted to suggest that a timeline might be an effective way of laying bare all of the inconsistencies & injustices which you have had to endure. It can be quite a useful tool for simplifying a complex narrative.

Maybe it's just me, but some of it wouldn't sound out of place in Orwell's "1984". The idea that the state can hold several mutually incompatible positions whilst claiming all of them to be simultaneously "true".

That's quite alarming. (Isn't it?)

[SantaClaus]

Does anyone have a local Member of Parliament who sits on the Public Accounts Committee?

Public Accounts Committee - membership - UK Parliament

My preference would be for the chair Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking.

Thanks
DR

Hi DR,

Is Andy Love any good?

About Andy

"I have developed a wide range of interests in my time as an MP and have held a number of different roles since entering Parliament. Soon after I was first elected in 1997 I joined the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee, which scrutinises the expenditure of Parliament and its associated organisations, and assesses the value for money given to taxpayers in relation to Parliament's work."

Sorry just realised he's a member Treasury Select Committee since 2005.

[not-a-penny]

PR

There's 3000 people affected by this. This thread alone has had 170,803 views. I'm sure the previous thread reached something ridiculous like half a million.
If everyone who silently reads this forum and is affected by BN66 gave only £10, we would have enough cash for an advert.

Then again ... pigs might fly

We can always start panicking when the Supreme Court judgement is read out, I suppose.

Getting a PR company involved BEFORE SC ruling is sensible. When the sh1t hits the fan and some of us start loosing our homes and worse, we need our side of the story told. We may be many things but our tax affairs were transparent based on current laws. The liars are those civil servants and politicians who mislead Parliament to change laws retrospectively. Before that we had IR 35 and the war waged on consultants/entrepreneurs by those lifers who have never understood the nature of risk taking.

As to the amount of contribution, I suggest we leave it to individual circumstances. I can do much better than £10 but not as much as £1K. All I need to hit the transfer button is DR posting the account details.