XL Insurance Company SE v IPORS Underwriting Ltd and others [2021] EWHC 474 (Comm) (4 March 2021) is not strictly a tax case but may be of real interest to tax practitioners. The facts are highly unusual. An insurer alleged that an individual underwriter and his firm had misappropriated funds and sued for their return. The individual had though included the funds as income on his tax return and had paid the resulting tax to HMRC. The insurer sought to include HMRC in the recovery litigation on the basis that the money it had received in tax was not the property of HMRC because the amounts misappropriated were not the individual’s taxable income. The High Court held that HMRC should be joined into a recovery claim as it was arguable that where there was no underlying...
