Abigail McGregor
Abigail is a Legal Director in the Tax Disputes team. She specialises in tax matters of actual and potential dispute with HMRC, and has a background in transactional tax. She works with clients and the wider tax teams to identify areas of tax risk in new taxes as they are developed and introduced, which has included the introduction of Plastic Packaging Tax, the Electricity Generator and Oil and Gas levies, as well as the impact of the notification of uncertain tax treatment rules. Abigail’s role has a broad remit, providing technical assistance to clients and members of the team on all areas of contentious tax including interpretation of tax law, tribunal procedure and HMRC collection and enforcement powers. She regularly writes thought leadership pieces in the tax press, including Tax Journal, Taxation and LexisPlus. Abigail was appointed as a fee paid judge in the FTT in 2015 and continues to sit on a part-time basis on a range of tax cases.
Practice Area
Panel
- Contributing Author
Qualified Year
- 2006
Experience
- Pinsent masons (2022 - Present)
- Lexis Nexis (2010 - 2022)
- Slaughter and May (2004 - 2010)
Membership
- Law Society of England and Wales
Qualification
- Qualified- England and Wales (2006)
Education
- University of Oxford: MA (2001)
1 Contributions by Abigail McGregor
PRACTICE NOTES
UK corporation tax (CTA 2009 ss 133A–133N): banks’ customer compensation—non-deductibility and 10% notional trade receipt; scope, disclosure condition, exclusions, entities affected and 2015 commencement
This Practice Note sets out the rules that, with effect from 8 July 2015 (or 15 July 2015 for corporate partners):
bar banking companies from deducting specified compensation outgoings for tax purposes, and
require an amount equal to 10% of the non-allowable compensation to be brought into the banking company’s taxable profits
This Practice Note does not address the recipient’s tax position on bank compensation. That question has been examined in cases including O’Neil v HMRC and Hackett v HMRC. For further detail, see Practice Note: Direct tax treatment of damages and compensation payments.
Reasons behind the rules
The government introduced measures denying relief for banks’ compensation payments and treating banks as receiving a notional trade receipt of 10% of the disallowed amount, in order to:
‘protect the Exchequer from banks’ past management failures’, and
‘ensure the [banking] sector makes an appropriate contribution to restoring the public finances’
This was considered necessary due to an ‘unprecedented’ (and rising) volume of compensation paid by banks to customers for the banks’ own misconduct, including mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI), interest rate hedging and card...
Tax
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