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English Commercial Court clarifies SPA tax gross-up: ‘subject to tax’ means actual tax payable; gross-up payable only when tax is due (AXA v Genworth)

Published on: 13 August 2020

Published by a LexisNexis Tax expert
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AXA SA v Genworth Financial International Holdings, LLC and Genworth Financial, Inc (and named third parties) [2020] EWHC 2024 (Comm)

What are the practical implications of this case?

In AXA v Genworth, the High Court examined a routine SPA clause requiring a gross-up for any tax arising in the recipient’s hands on a payment (here, a seller’s indemnity for 90% of liabilities tied to PPI mis-selling by the acquired entities). The court ruled that the expression ‘subject to taxation in the hands of the receiving party’ means ‘actually taxed in the hands of the receiving party’. It also decided that any extra sum to gross up for tax in hand is only payable once the recipient is under an enforceable duty to pay an actual sum of tax (at para [222]). That conclusion followed from construing the gross-up wording and the SPA in line with the Supreme Court’s approach to contractual construction in Wood v Capital Insurance Services [2017] AC 1173. The court identified the objective sense of the language that the parties...

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