No To Retro Tax – Campaign Against Section 58 Finance Act 2008

[DonkeyRhubarb]

Wondering if members whose MPs are on the finance committee will be contacting them with Whitehouse pack? Anything in motion on this? (PM me if you'd rather not post on here)

WH are waiting for the Finance Bill to be published on Thursday. The membership of the committee hasn't been announced yet.

We're also still waiting for HMRC to publish the report on the consultation.

[nick4notax]

WH are waiting for the Finance Bill to be published on Thursday. The membership of the committee hasn't been announced yet.

We're also still waiting for HMRC to publish the report on the consultation.

Thanks. No doubt they're busy picking MPs who aspire to ministerial power.....

[DonkeyRhubarb]

I don't know how true this is but we've heard from a source close to senior HMRC officers that it's the Government driving these changes, not HMRC.

That kind of makes sense because it's a major policy affecting a large number of taxpayers.

If it's true then the Government are not going to be in any mood to water it down. There is no sign that they have taken any notice of the criticism heaped on the proposals by all the professional bodies, or the large number of responses they received to the consultation.

However, we need to wait to see what's actually in the Finance Bill.

[smalldog]

I don't know how true this is but we've heard from a source close to senior HMRC officers that it's the Government driving these changes, not HMRC.

That kind of makes sense because it's a major policy affecting a large number of taxpayers.

If it's true then the Government are not going to be in any mood to water it down. There is no sign that they have taken any notice of the criticism heaped on the proposals by all the professional bodies, or the large number of responses they received to the consultation.

However, we need to wait to see what's actually in the Finance Bill.

The whole thing smacks of Gaukism to me. Will be interesting to see the debates but im resigned to it being enacted as is, any positives that come from the debates will be a bonus!

[nick4notax]

I still cannot get it into my head that such a smash'n'grab policy will ever get past ECHR illegal state confiscation of assets. One positive, when we finally win this, the compensation claim will be seven figures

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

The whole thing smacks of Gaukism to me. Will be interesting to see the debates but im resigned to it being enacted as is, any positives that come from the debates will be a bonus!

I think you are right - in the introduction to the GAAR guidance there is the statement "It [the Government] therefore rejects the approach taken by Courts in a number of old cases to the effect that taxpayers are free to use their ingenuity to reduce their tax bills by any lawful means" - it then goes on to quote Lord Clyde in the Ayrshire Pullman case. It seems as though the accepted legal authorities on tax law are being overturned by the Government by the introduction of new statutes.

[nickersan]

Presumably it's envisaged that the GAAR are being applied retrospectively?

[Disgusted of Coventry]

This may be of interest to you guys BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, The Rule of Law v the Rule of Man - a debate regarding the new legislation and also GAAR - it's argued that the Government cannot impose the rule of man on the rule of law

That was an interesting programme, but I wonder if the narrator missed something. That if too much power is given to civil servants, then could it leave the door open to various forms of corruption?

You could reasonably say that s58[4] was created through corruption, and that was when the Rule of Law was supposedly firmly in place. It doesn't inspire much confidence in the Rule of Man...

[SantaClaus]

Newsletter 25th March 2014

Dear all

We've sent out the latest member's newsletter today, together with a further toolkit for responding to an HMRC reply you may have received from your MP.

If you didn't receive the newsletter (we can't always get past spam filters!), I have uploaded both documents to the member's section of the NTRT website.

Best regards

Santa

[eek]

Dear all

We've sent out the latest member's newsletter today, together with a further toolkit for responding to an HMRC reply you may have received from your MP.

If you didn't receive the newsletter (we can't always get past spam filters!), I have uploaded both documents to the member's section of the NTRT website.

Best regards

Santa

I take it the HMRC letter was as 100% accurate, honest and historically correct as previous ones.....