In Scambler v HMRC, the Upper Tribunal sets out when it is permissible to look to the previous legislation to help interpret Tax Law Rewrite statutes. Rupert Shiers and Julian Brown (Hogan Lovells) review the decision.
A key objective of consolidating legislation like the TLR project is ‘to gather disparate provisions into a single easily accessible code’ (Eclipse Film Partners (No. 35) LLP v HMRC [2013] UKUT 639 (TC) para 97). That objective would be seriously undermined were one to be faced with the uncertainty and expense of going back to ICTA 1988 (or trudging back further through decades of earlier legislation) to decipher today’s meaning. But even where the TLR project was not in itself intended to change tax law the TLR statutes use different words to aim to deliver the same meaning. When can taxpayers or HMRC look to the past? There is undoubtedly experience...
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In Scambler v HMRC, the Upper Tribunal sets out when it is permissible to look to the previous legislation to help interpret Tax Law Rewrite statutes. Rupert Shiers and Julian Brown (Hogan Lovells) review the decision.
A key objective of consolidating legislation like the TLR project is ‘to gather disparate provisions into a single easily accessible code’ (Eclipse Film Partners (No. 35) LLP v HMRC [2013] UKUT 639 (TC) para 97). That objective would be seriously undermined were one to be faced with the uncertainty and expense of going back to ICTA 1988 (or trudging back further through decades of earlier legislation) to decipher today’s meaning. But even where the TLR project was not in itself intended to change tax law the TLR statutes use different words to aim to deliver the same meaning. When can taxpayers or HMRC look to the past? There is undoubtedly experience...
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