Tax Avoidance Schemes Legal Advice

Patrick Cannon is a highly experienced tax lawyer offering legal advice and representation to clients who have been sold aggressive tax avoidance schemes, such as Employer Financed Retirement Benefit schemes, or EFRBs.

Advisors often sell these schemes without giving a proper risk warning to their clients that they might be investigated by HM Revenue and Customs in the years to come and receive judicial and press scrutiny.

If you have been a victim of a tax avoidance scheme, you may face a lengthy investigation and have to pay back-taxes with interest, penalties and face possible prosecution by HMRC. Read more about the most common tax avoidance schemes and their penalties.

How can Patrick Cannon help?

Patrick can help to settle your tax disputes with HMRC. He can also act for you on claims for damages for negligent tax advice, and represent you in any legal action against the financial advisers and introducers involved.

Many tax avoidance scheme advisers claim that compensation is not available, because the client would otherwise have paid the tax, and has therefore suffered no loss. 

This is not true. There were often legitimate ways of reducing or eliminating a client’s tax bill without resorting to schemes.

Clients were not advised to take these legitimate tax saving routes, because the introducers wanted to earn a commission from putting their clients into artificial schemes that – certainly since late 2010 – were contrary to the intention of Parliament, and were never likely to succeed.

In some cases, victims of schemes, such as Eclipse, are now facing huge tax bills. For many investors, this may mean losses up to several times that of their original investment. Taxpayers face the loss of their business and/or their homes. 

Patrick is authorised by the Bar Standards Board to do Public Access Work and litigation, which means that he can work directly with clients and deal directly with their tax affairs and HMRC tax investigations on their behalf.

Patrick works on the basis of fixed fees agreed on up-front via his Clerk and he does not use open-ended hourly rates.

Do you think that you may have been mis-sold an aggressive tax avoidance scheme? If so, please contact Patrick Cannon here for an initial discussion about the options open to you.

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For professional and insurance reasons Patrick is unable to offer any advice until he has been formally instructed.