R (oao Refinitiv Ltd and others) v HMRC

In R (oao Refinitiv Ltd and others) v HMRC [2024] EWCA Civ 1412 (15 November) the Court of Appeal (CA) dismissed the companies’ appeal against the decision of the Upper Tribunal (UT) not to allow their judicial review claim in respect of diverted profits tax (DPT) charging notices issued by HMRC to three of the companies. 

The three companies provided services (including services in respect of software new product and content development and data hosting) to a Swiss-based group entity which centrally held valuable intellectual property (IP) assets. The DPT notices charged the companies to tax for the 2018 accounting period by reference to a ‘relevant alternative provision’ (RAP) which utilised a ‘profit-split’ methodology (effectively apportioning the annual profits of the Swiss entity for the 2018 accounting period and profits accruing from the disposal of the relevant IP assets in the 2018...