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Aaronson names general anti-avoidance rule study group

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Three judges, two leading tax academics and BP’s head of tax will work with tax barrister Graham Aaronson to explore the case for a general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), the Treasury announced.

Aaronson has enlisted:

Three judges, two leading tax academics and BP’s head of tax will work with tax barrister Graham Aaronson to explore the case for a general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), the Treasury announced.

Aaronson has enlisted:

  • John Bartlett, Group Head of Tax, BP Plc;
  • Judith Freedman, Professor of Taxation Law and Director of Legal Research at Oxford University’s Centre for Business Taxation;
  • Sir Launcelot Henderson, Judge of the High Court, Chancery Division;
  • Lord Hoffmann, formerly Lord of Appeal, Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong;
  • Howard Nowlan, formerly Tax Partner at Slaughter and May, part time Judge of the First Tier Tax Tribunal; and
  • John Tiley, Emeritus Professor of the Law of Taxation, Director of the Centre for Tax Law at Cambridge University.

Freedman has proposed a general anti-avoidance principle, and argues that standard objections to a GAAR need to be questioned. She is a member of the Office of Tax Simplification’s small business review committee, which is examining possible alternatives to the ‘IR35’ legislation dealing with services provided by intermediaries.

Tiley was awarded a CBE in 2003 for services to tax law. His notes on the law of taxation, published on the university website, suggest that tax planning might be regarded as ‘doing what Parliament wanted you to do’; tax mitigation as ‘doing what Parliament intended you to be able to do’; and tax avoidance as ‘taking advantage of tax breaks in a way Parliament cannot have intended’.

KPMG has warned that the definition of ‘tax avoidance’ must be sufficiently clear to provide certainty to taxpayers as to the scope of a GAAR.

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