In Whittaker v Concept Fiduciaries Ltd, Guernsey Judgment 15/2017, Guernsey’s Royal Court considered the UK rules on rectification of advisers' errors in setting up a trust.
SME Tax News
Pilots working for Ryanair have been under tax enquiries from both the UK and German tax authorities.
HMRC have merged the two numbers previously used for tax evasion, and customs fraud, into one number as part of their efforts to streamline intelligence gathering on tax fraud.
As part of HMRC’s approach to dealing with the new offence of Criminal Facilitation of Tax Evasion, it has given details of how an organisation can self-report any such offence discovered.
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has issued a ‘future work programme’ identifying areas that it will address in the short term, the next 12 months and in the medium term.
In Rachel McGreevy v HMRC [2017] TC06109 penalties for a late non-resident capital gains tax return were cancelled; no disposal was proved in the relevant tax year, the taxpayer had a reasonable excuse or special circumstances.
In M Watts v Revenue Scotland [2017] FTSTC 1 the Scottish tax tribunal upheld penalties of £890 for a late LBTT return despite no tax being due; ignorance of the law was no excuse for the self-represented tax payer.
In J Cooney (as representative partners of Citygate Partnership) v HMRC [2017] TC05950, the First- Tier Tribunal (FTT) agreed that the partnership had a reasonable excuse for the late return and HMRC should have given a special circumstances reduction as they had the individual partners’ returns.
In Jörg Märtin v HMRC TC05942, the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) held that where there was no evidence of a valid reason for HMRC to have delayed dealing with an enquiry they had to issue a closure notice.
In Stephen Bailey v HMRC [2017] TC06085 the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) held that a property was the taxpayer’s main residence despite the short period in which he actually occupied it.