Kaye Adams appears to have finally won a ten-year battle with HM Revenue & Customs after the tax authority said it had decided not to appeal after her latest court win.
The ITV presenter has been arguing her case that she is self-employed in the face of clampdown over so-called IR35 rules. Last year she won a third court victory over a disputed £124,000 tax bill.
HMRC said it had decided not to appeal against the First Tier Tribunal’s decision in the case of Atholl House Products, Kaye’s company. “Given this litigation has been ongoing for a number of years and the FTT does not set binding legal precedents, we don’t think it would be proportionate to appeal in this case,” a spokesman said.
They’re not going to make the Cadbury mistake again. Where pursuing them led to the entire CFC structure – and the Vodafone case – collapsing.
Not chasing this to a precendent making court means that no one else can rely upon the ruling to challenge HMRC’s views – however wrong they actually are, every case must be, again, fought from first principles.
An actually useful taxation office would demand to take this to that next court – so as to establish the law once and for all.
An actually useful taxation office would demand to take this to that next court – so as to establish the law once and for all.
What would thieving cunts do?
Oh wait.
I think you express the situation more accurately Steve.
“Given this litigation has been ongoing for a number of years and the FTT does not set binding legal precedents, we don’t think it would be proportionate to appeal in this case,”
Err, with £124k at stake, if that’s genuinely the figure, then how is an appeal to the Upper Tribunal not proportionate?
Actually it’s a bit more convoluted than just a FTT hearing.
There was a FTT hearing, then an Upper Tribunal, (Adams won in both), then a Court of Appeal case where the earlier verdicts were not overturned but the CofA decided that some errors had been made and referred it back to the UT. The UT referred it back to the FTT. This last referral is the case mentioned that Adams won (again).
If only they would have a go at Gary Lineker
They don’t want to take it further as a precedent would be made that others could use. They want everyone to have to start from first principles because that costs the tax victim money and they may decide to cut their loses.
They are maximising their income this way. They may lose some because as you know justice is the best you can afford in this mickey mouse country and being a bunch of thieves HMRC don’t want to make too big a fuss so tax victims thing there are no options for them.
My Lord T has it.
In many cases, putting up sufficiently resolute resistance to a demand, (whether the demand is justified or not), is sufficient to get the person making the demand to back off.
The tax office wants easy and amicable wins, not to drag everything through court. It also wants to maximise revenue, and has decided £124K is not worth the risk of losing here, thus losing the revenue from everyone else who might otherwise decide to pay up and cut their losses (and not spend 6 years in court).
The tax office is therefore being most useful to its customer (the government) in not pursuing a risky but small value case. Others can however now assume that they won’t pursue similar sums that are in dispute for similar reasons.
I had a similar dispute with the German tax office, over VAT. I think they actually had a point, but several pages of argument that they did not was sufficient to never hear from them again (and the event in question is now past the statute of limitations).
The amount they wanted, a few thousand euros, was clearly not worth the effort. It was made clear if their request turned into a formal demand it would be taken to court, and I had made them sufficiently uncertain of winning. Also, any judgement here can be referred to as precedent, it doesn’t have to be from the highest relevant court (though that tends to get judges attention) and judgement in my favour would have scuppered what are probably hundreds of similar claims made every year, and of which some proprortion of recipients will just roll over and pay as their personal path of least resistance.