Richard Wild considers the recent St Martin’s Medical Services case from the First-tier Tribunal, in which HMRC’s attempts to counter an anti-avoidance scheme were found to have backfired.
All readers will have a view on tax avoidance whether it’s fair game morally wrong or something that should be stamped out. When an avoidance case fails you would expect the taxpayer concerned to suffer the effects of that loss and that’s normally the end of the story. But what if things go wrong for HMRC? Are there further mechanisms it can adopt to make sure the taxpayer does indeed lose out? The recent case involving St Martin’s Medical Services Limited (Services) [2012] UKFTT 485 (TC) demonstrates the lengths HMRC will go to in its fight against tax avoidance; but did...
