In Centrica Overseas Holdings Ltd v HMRC [2024] UKSC 25 (16 July) the Supreme Court (SC) dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s (CA) decision that advisers’ fees incurred after the decision to sell its Dutch business was taken were ‘expenses of a capital nature’ and therefore pursuant to CTA 2009 s 1219(3)(a) not deductible as expenses of management.
Centrica Overseas Holdings Ltd (COHL) an intermediate holding company in the Centrica plc (Centrica) group owned the group’s Dutch parent company Oxxio BV (Oxxio) and its subsidiaries. The Dutch business was persistently loss-making and Centrica decided to sell the business in June/July 2009. The sale process however proved difficult and it was only in February 2011 that Centrica approved in principle a sale to the buyer with the final agreement signed in March 2011.
Between July 2009 and March 2011...
