The Quentin Skinner 2005 Settlement L and others v HMRC

In The Quentin Skinner 2005 Settlement L and others v HMRC [2019] UKFTT 516 (6 August 2019) the FTT found that beneficiaries under settlements were entitled to entrepreneurs’ relief on the disposal of shares by the settlements even though the settlements had held the shares for less than a year.

The appellants had been given interests in possession under their respective settlements which had each received 32 250 ordinary shares in a limited company in August 2015 making it their personal company for the purpose of TCGA 1992 s 169S. The settlements had then disposed of the shares in December 2015 and HMRC had denied entrepreneurs’ relief on the ground that ‘the beneficiaries had not held an interest in possession in the shares held by the trusts for the requisite 12 month period’. It was accepted that the beneficiaries were officers of the...