Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Non-recourse definition

What does Non-recourse mean? Non-recourse (also called “without recourse”) describes, in receivables finance, a purchase or factoring arrangement where the purchaser cannot claim back from the seller if the debtor fails to pay due solely to credit/insolvency risk, once the receivable has been accepted (often after notice or verification to the debtor). It is a commercial term, not defined in legislation, used across England & Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland, and also encountered in securitisation and project finance (often as “limited recourse”). Key features usually include transfer of debtor insolvency risk to the purchaser, subject to carve-outs. Recourse commonly remains...

Ramsay in UK tax: purposive statutory construction, not a judicial anti-avoidance rule; scope across taxes and leading cases

Published by a LexisNexis Tax expert

Practice notes

The Ramsay principle (or Ramsay doctrine)

Lexis+® UK Tax thanks Nigel Doran of Macfarlanes LLP for his input on an earlier version of this Practice Note. The views set out remain those of Lexis+® UK Tax. This Practice Note has since been reviewed and updated by Aparna Nathan, KC, Devereux Chambers.

The Ramsay principle denotes a judicial approach to construing legislation in cases concerning tax avoidance. It originated with the House of Lords’ landmark ruling in WT Ramsay in 1981. The House of Lords restated the approach in BMBF v Mawson in 2004, and, as a result, some decisions describe the principle by reference to BMBF (or Mawson) rather than Ramsay. For consistency, this Practice Note, and related Practice Notes, use the term ‘Ramsay principle’.

In broad outline, the Ramsay principle can be summarised as:

consider the legislation—what did Parliament intend in choosing that wording?
consider the facts—should a particular transaction, viewed realistically, be treated as part of a wider scheme?
then, in light of those two stages, how does the legislation apply to the facts?

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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