Tax Policy Associates founder Dan Neidle has started investigating what he calls the ‘underreported side of tax avoidance’, initially focusing on the involvement of senior tax lawyers in advising promoters of tax avoidance schemes.
In a recent speech to the City of London Solicitor’s Company, Neidle highlighted the critical role of lawyers in upholding the rule of law, including in cases where, typically, a small boutique firm sets up a tax scheme and approaches a KC for an opinion that the scheme works. In the circumstances Neidle outlines, the KC duly gives the opinion and the promoter sells the scheme to taxpayers. Neidle alleges that KCs can easily issue the requisite opinion, pocket the fee and expect no further scrutiny; the KC will not be sued by the taxpayer, regardless of the eventual tax outcome, because the taxpayer was never the KC’s client.
Tax Policy Associates founder Dan Neidle has started investigating what he calls the ‘underreported side of tax avoidance’, initially focusing on the involvement of senior tax lawyers in advising promoters of tax avoidance schemes.
In a recent speech to the City of London Solicitor’s Company, Neidle highlighted the critical role of lawyers in upholding the rule of law, including in cases where, typically, a small boutique firm sets up a tax scheme and approaches a KC for an opinion that the scheme works. In the circumstances Neidle outlines, the KC duly gives the opinion and the promoter sells the scheme to taxpayers. Neidle alleges that KCs can easily issue the requisite opinion, pocket the fee and expect no further scrutiny; the KC will not be sued by the taxpayer, regardless of the eventual tax outcome, because the taxpayer was never the KC’s client.