Forums, socials, magazines. They are all filled with mighty tax and SDLT claims.
Most crumble fairly readily under the scrutiny of anyone with any tax knowledge at all but some do make it right through to the tribunal and court systems. I have already talked about the comprehensive list of cases win by HMRC and published by the Chartered Institute of Tax ( here it is again if you need it ). They keep it up to date as well which is handy.
That said another case has just been hear where the taxpayer lost. It focused on a relief called “pre completion relief” and although I won’t go right through the case (I couldn’t really anyway as I am not an SDLT expert!) the Tribunal said that:
“it is self-evident that a purchaser buying a residential property would not go through the transactions envisaged by the scheme unless it would save them SDLT. There are no domestic or other reasons why the appellants would have structured the purchase in the way described in the scheme unless they had as their main purpose the avoidance or reduction to the SDLT otherwise payable.”
Unusually the promoters of this scheme where still around to mount a defence but the Tribunal further said:
“It is clear to us that there is no technical merit whatsoever in Cornerstone’s analysis nor in the grounds of appeal which were drafted by Goldstone. We therefore have no hesitation in striking out this appeal as it has no reasonable prospects of success.”
HMRC have reported that they are aware of about 750 transactions within the same scheme. They will be pretty busy knocking on doors and collecting money for a while. Although I don’t know for sure I suspect the chances of further support by the scheme promoter and a refund of fees is getting slimmer by the day.