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Mercury Tax Group Limited v HMRC: Difference between revisions
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{{cn}}In {{citer|Mercury Tax Group Limited and Darren Neil Masters|HMRC|2008|EWHC|2721}}<ref>https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2008/2721.html</ref> the claimant operated a tax avoidance scheme — and at this point let us cite our common observation that [[Little old ladies make bad law|little old ladies, welsh hoteliers, and tax dodgers make bad law]], so ''en garde'' — and the respondent Tax Man executed a series of dawn raids calling to mind an era of brigands, derring-do, swinging on ropes, sword-fights on poop-decks and the general kind of mischief and high-seas japery one doesn’t readily associate with the proper accounting for imputation credits, but good luck to them all the same. | {{cn}}In {{citer|Mercury Tax Group Limited and Darren Neil Masters|HMRC|2008|EWHC|2721}}<ref>https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2008/2721.html</ref> the claimant operated a tax avoidance scheme — and at this point let us cite our common observation that [[Little old ladies make bad law|little old ladies, welsh hoteliers, and tax dodgers make bad law]], so ''en garde'' — and the respondent Tax Man executed a series of dawn raids calling to mind an era of brigands, derring-do, swinging on ropes, sword-fights on poop-decks and the general kind of mischief and high-seas japery one doesn’t readily associate with the proper accounting for imputation credits, but good luck to them all the same. | ||
Tax ''avoidance'' being the right side of an [[Bright line test|unbright line]], and ''evasion'' the wrong side of it, these raids were, we | Tax ''avoidance'' being the right side of an [[Bright line test|unbright line]], and ''evasion'' the wrong side of it, these raids were, we suppose, designed to uncover evidence of flaws in the scheme’s implementation that might cross it from ''avoidance'' to ''evasion''. | ||
The best that the Revenue could come up with was shortcomings in formalities regarding how clients executed their legal documentation. | |||
{{quote|“It is common ground before me that ... the client was asked at some time in early or mid November to sign incomplete drafts of each of these three documents; and that, when fresh documents in final form came to be executed, he was not asked to sign those versions but instead the signature pages from the drafts were detached and stapled to the final version with the intention that that should constitute his signature to that version.”}} | {{quote|“It is common ground before me that ... the client was asked at some time in early or mid November to sign incomplete drafts of each of these three documents; and that, when fresh documents in final form came to be executed, he was not asked to sign those versions but instead the signature pages from the drafts were detached and stapled to the final version with the intention that that should constitute his signature to that version.”}} | ||