One minute with tax investigation specialist Jesminara Rahman.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
I represent clients on a wide range of tax disputes. I am dealing now with a large employment tax issue where a reg 80 assessment for £3.7m has been issued; a tax investigation covering several connected companies, appeals against personal liability notices; COP 9 cases and more. I am also doing a lot of work on R&D tax cases, including cascading technical knowledge to agents and companies who cannot afford representation otherwise to defend genuine R&D tax credit claims. I am also providing ADR training for tax disputes.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
I would like to see HMRC guidance being clarified and reconciled with the actual tax legislation, because there are some places that are often misinterpreted by HMRC caseworkers. For example, HMRC caseworkers can still get it wrong on reasonable excuses, VAT invoices, and appeal processes.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
My career stayed static for several years as I raised my family, but it did not need to be. Although I am grateful to HMRC for providing the flexibility to raise my family, I should have thought more constructively about my career. The values that HMRC holds high, i.e. leadership competences and strategical thinking in the organisation, does not reconcile with the technical competences valued in the private sector.
I wish I had started networking earlier and understood then that we do not need to go out of the office to network. We can network from the comfort of our own offices/room via social media.
Are any new rules causing a particular problem in practice?
I think retrospective legislation should not be allowed as it does not provide a fair opportunity for taxpayers to get things right if they do not have the right guidance in place contemporaneously. It’s not fair and it’s not just. Yet we agents have been given the task of guiding our clients through this when I can see if our clients had been given the right guidance (that did not exist) at the time they would not have entered the scheme. As an example, the loan charge was brought into legislation on 6 April 2019, that brought into charge all outstanding amounts under any disguised remuneration since December 2010.
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
Yes, the tax case of England [2023] UKFTT 313 (TC) has, as it has a direct bearing on one of my cases where the director’s loan had been written off by the liquidator of the company. I came to that case from another angle where a personal liability notice was issued against the director. I submitted a timely appeal, which was accepted by HMRC and led to settling the appeal by reducing the overdrawn director’s loan account from around £1.3m to £482k. As result of the above case, the written off director’s loan account will need to be declared in the director’s tax return after any payments made to the company during liquidation.
R&D tax credits is another contentious area at the moment, as HMRC disagrees with the tribunal judge’s decision in Quinn [2021] UKFTT 437 (TC), leading to many R&D tax credit claims floating in no man’s land. Although HMRC have chosen not to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, they are not following the tribunal’s decision.
And finally, you might not know this about me but…
I have a masters in philosophy and was seriously considering becoming a philosophy lecturer. Later on, I grabbed a job opportunity and actually became a lecturer. It was my retired HMRC director, May Anderson who told me in her Scottish accent not to be stupid and go back into tax. If it was not for May’s advice I would not be where I am today – so thank you, May! And yes, I am a nerd – I love Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
One minute with tax investigation specialist Jesminara Rahman.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
I represent clients on a wide range of tax disputes. I am dealing now with a large employment tax issue where a reg 80 assessment for £3.7m has been issued; a tax investigation covering several connected companies, appeals against personal liability notices; COP 9 cases and more. I am also doing a lot of work on R&D tax cases, including cascading technical knowledge to agents and companies who cannot afford representation otherwise to defend genuine R&D tax credit claims. I am also providing ADR training for tax disputes.
If you could make one change to a tax law or practice, what would it be?
I would like to see HMRC guidance being clarified and reconciled with the actual tax legislation, because there are some places that are often misinterpreted by HMRC caseworkers. For example, HMRC caseworkers can still get it wrong on reasonable excuses, VAT invoices, and appeal processes.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
My career stayed static for several years as I raised my family, but it did not need to be. Although I am grateful to HMRC for providing the flexibility to raise my family, I should have thought more constructively about my career. The values that HMRC holds high, i.e. leadership competences and strategical thinking in the organisation, does not reconcile with the technical competences valued in the private sector.
I wish I had started networking earlier and understood then that we do not need to go out of the office to network. We can network from the comfort of our own offices/room via social media.
Are any new rules causing a particular problem in practice?
I think retrospective legislation should not be allowed as it does not provide a fair opportunity for taxpayers to get things right if they do not have the right guidance in place contemporaneously. It’s not fair and it’s not just. Yet we agents have been given the task of guiding our clients through this when I can see if our clients had been given the right guidance (that did not exist) at the time they would not have entered the scheme. As an example, the loan charge was brought into legislation on 6 April 2019, that brought into charge all outstanding amounts under any disguised remuneration since December 2010.
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
Yes, the tax case of England [2023] UKFTT 313 (TC) has, as it has a direct bearing on one of my cases where the director’s loan had been written off by the liquidator of the company. I came to that case from another angle where a personal liability notice was issued against the director. I submitted a timely appeal, which was accepted by HMRC and led to settling the appeal by reducing the overdrawn director’s loan account from around £1.3m to £482k. As result of the above case, the written off director’s loan account will need to be declared in the director’s tax return after any payments made to the company during liquidation.
R&D tax credits is another contentious area at the moment, as HMRC disagrees with the tribunal judge’s decision in Quinn [2021] UKFTT 437 (TC), leading to many R&D tax credit claims floating in no man’s land. Although HMRC have chosen not to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, they are not following the tribunal’s decision.
And finally, you might not know this about me but…
I have a masters in philosophy and was seriously considering becoming a philosophy lecturer. Later on, I grabbed a job opportunity and actually became a lecturer. It was my retired HMRC director, May Anderson who told me in her Scottish accent not to be stupid and go back into tax. If it was not for May’s advice I would not be where I am today – so thank you, May! And yes, I am a nerd – I love Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.
