Counter Avoidance

**dammit chloe** · 3 June 2019, 22:26

Originally posted by Retrospective View Post

Hi. I realise that many legal challenges have been made to the retrospective loan charge. Has any group considered a legal challenge of negligence? Our schemes were declared on our tax returns. These tax returns were accepted and for years we thought that everything was OK, legal and all above board. HMRC has been negligent in allowing this situation to occur.

I have heard talk but that is all so far. It is clear they have been but how that could be actioned I have no idea.

**BrilloPad** · 4 June 2019, 07:11

At least one group has taken another look at this in light of the BoJo court case.

You need very deep pockets and alot of time. And the judiciary are still very much in favour of HMRC. A few token cases may get to win.

**webberg** · 4 June 2019, 07:48

Originally posted by Retrospective View Post

Hi. I realise that many legal challenges have been made to the retrospective loan charge. Has any group considered a legal challenge of negligence? Our schemes were declared on our tax returns. These tax returns were accepted and for years we thought that everything was OK, legal and all above board. HMRC has been negligent in allowing this situation to occur.

I'm sure that this will be looked at but "negligence" is not the right word.

We have a self assessment system. If you have fully reported all of your income and sources of income and HMRC still fails to open an enquiry, then you have protection under the law.

That protection is undermined severely by the loan charge of course, but the defence there is that it is a new charge on a new source.

If you did declare the scheme on the tax return - fully - you are very unusual. Most did not. Mainly because the promoter told them that they did not have to (wrong advice in most cases).

Also HMRC did not "allow" this to occur. HMRC has no power to approve a business nor to disapprove it and close it. If the business is engaged in evading tax, then they can prosecute for that, but no business ever has to have HMRC approval to be set up or operate.

Tempting as it is to blame other parties for the mess, (and HMRC for sure has a lot to answer for), at the end of the day it's caveat emptor and accepting that you may have been taken in, fooled, duped, scammed or whatever word you choose is the first step to understanding the issues and dealing with them.