Home › Forums › Patrick Cannon › Are there any SDLT avoidance schemes? › Reply To: Are there any SDLT avoidance schemes?
Juanita, we shall have to await the outcome of the tribunal decision in the case you mention and then take a view on how the decision affects the interpretation and application of the SDLT rules. It is interesting that the case involves a pre-section 75A transaction.The cases that are being issued with discovery assessments at the moment will of course need to be considered carefully by advisers – some of the schemes I have been shown plainly did not work technically (as I believe the promoters concerned may have already conceded) and taxpayers who relied on those particular schemes should consider conceding and paying-up. HMRC’s litigation and settlement strategy seems to be in a state of flux at the moment with the policy makers now saying that we have misunderstood it all along and it is about achieving a sensible result (Vodafone?) rather than litigating to the bitter end cases in which they think they have a 51% or better chance (see the recent Tax Journal pieces by HMRC). This message hasn’t reached the operations end of HMRC yet hence the reference in one of the papers you referred to a “relentless” pursuit of taxpayers who “bend” the rules. A good example of the “relentless” approach is at [2010] STC 763 at 775 para 43 where Norris J refers to: “the blustering intransigence of the other [HMRC] and its determination to litigate everything to the bitter end.” It may be that tone of recent pronoucements on SDLT will have become more emolient by the time some schemes reach the review stage as operations people attend the relevant internal training and the so-called “misunderstandings” about the lss are explained. There are also schemes that are technically sound and are worth defending regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable HMRC behave towards them.