WHA Ltd v HMRC

The Supreme Court has spent four days hearing argument in the case of WHA Ltd v HMRC (CA 2007 STC 1695). The case is notable for the unusually long time between the CA decision in 2007 and the Supreme Court hearing in January 2013. A group of companies instituted a complex scheme which was intended to allow the recovery of input tax charged on repair services made under insurance policies relating to vehicle breakdown (‘MBI policies’). The scheme involved the use of two Gibraltar insurance companies one of which appointed a UK company (W) to handle claims and pay the repair bills. HMRC rejected the repayment claims considering firstly that the garages which provided the repair services were making their supplies to the insured customers rather than to W and additionally that the scheme was an ‘abuse’ within the principles laid...