Ryanair Ltd v HMRC

In Ryanair Ltd v HMRC (Upper Tribunal – 12 April) a company (R) claimed a repayment of air passenger duty of more than £10 000 000. HMRC rejected the claim. R appealed and also applied for judicial review contending that it should have treated the flights as qualifying for the ‘connected flights exemption’. The UT dismissed both the appeal and the application. Warren J concluded that ‘other airlines were able to discover for themselves that means of satisfying the ticketing condition were possible and acceptable to HMRC notwithstanding their abandonment of paper tickets. The claim that Ryanair a major airline which had been accounting for APD ever since its inception had claimed the benefit of the exemption in the past and had access to the Public Notices as well as the legislation needed special assistance in order to find out how...