Legal News

Scatola and others v HMRC [2025] UKUT 156 ( TCC) The appeals serve as lead cases brought by three unrelated pairs of taxpayers, each of whom adopted a marketed SDLT avoidance scheme designed to eliminate SDLT on buying a dwelling, akin to the arrangements examined and rejected in Project Blue [2018] UKSC 30. The planning comprised a sub-sale to V Ltd, a Guernsey special purpose vehicle, followed by the grant back to the taxpayers of a 999-year lease. Three SDLT returns were submitted: return A, covering the taxpayers’ acquisition of the freehold, showed no SDLT as sub-sale relief was claimed return B, filed by V Ltd for its freehold purchase, reported no SDLT via Finance Act 2003 section 71A relief (alternative property finance) return C, concerning the taxpayers’ lease acquisition, again showed no SDLT, relying on FA 2003, s 71A HMRC then commenced an enquiry into the...

Moran v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKFTT 540 ( TC) What are the practical implications of this case? Although there have been many decisions examining the charge under the transfer of assets abroad code in Chapter 2 of ITA 2007, Pt 13 in relation to transferors, the authorities offer far thinner guidance on the position where income is matched to benefits enjoyed by a UK resident. Moran is a rare illustration of the courts wrestling with the consequences and operation of that charge. What matters particularly in Moran is the First-tier Tribunal’s (the FTT) way of tying the benefits received to the transactions that led to income arising to a person outside the UK. There were at least two transfers of assets. The transfer that plainly produced a benefit did not give rise to income in the hands of a person abroad. The...

In this issue: Free webinars Probate Court of Protection UK taxes for Private Client Tax avoidance, evasion and non-compliance HMRC Manuals updates Family businesses and ownership structures Pensions, insurance and tax efficient investments International Question of the week Additional Private Client updates this week Daily and weekly news alerts Lex Talk®Private Client: a Lexis+® community New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Useful information Free webinars Free webinars on costs in contentious estates and Will validity issues We’re delighted to highlight recent sessions from Lexis Nexis Webinars. To view and browse the full on‑demand catalogue in Lexis Nexis University, use the credentials below; the webinar will be ready to ‘launch’ within the Private Client area. The links remain active until 13 June. Costs in...

See Q& A: To what extent can an executor sell estate properties and collect in the rest of the estate assets if they are put on notice of a claim under the Inheritance ( Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975? Assume the relevant properties are neither held under a joint tenancy—since otherwise they would then fall outside the estate automatically by the right of survivorship—nor subject to any limitations set out in the deceased’s Will, which may well apply where the properties are co-owned as tenants in common. Under the Inheritance ( Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 ( I( PFD) A 1975), an application must be lodged within six months from the date the grant of probate. Throughout that period, and for a further four months to permit service of proceedings, an executor should avoid distributing the estate or making final...

In this issue Trusts Court of Protection Elderly and vulnerable clients UK taxes for Private Client HMRC Manuals updates Tax avoidance, evasion and non-compliance Regulatory compliance for Private Client Contentious trusts and estates International Question of the week Additional Private Client updates this week Daily and weekly news alerts Lex Talk®Private Client: a Lexis+® community New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Latest Q& As Useful information Trusts CTJ update on Commercial Court seminar on equity in commercial law The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary ( CTJ) records that the Commercial Court has staged its latest seminar centred on equity in commercial law. Discussions addressed the accountability of fiduciaries, how equity underpins commercial bargains, and the doctrine of equitable rescission. See: LNB News 19/05/2025 45......

Moran v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 540 ( TC) For many years, the taxpayer lived in a UK home because of intricate and opaque structures arranged by her deceased husband. He purchased the property and later transferred it to a Jersey‑resident company, N Ltd, which he had set up. N Ltd was owned by a Jersey discretionary trust he had also created, the C trust. A further Jersey company, W Ltd, was owned by another Jersey discretionary trust settled by Mr Moran, the B trust. The continuing expenses of the property were covered by loans made by W Ltd to N Ltd. After her husband’s death, the taxpayer ostensibly lived in the property under a licence to occupy. HMRC issued assessments on the taxpayer under the TOAA rules for eight years. Under those rules, income would be treated as arising where a...

Zzaman v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 539 ( TC) Mr Zzaman appealed a discovery assessment concerning the HICBC for 2018–19. He was not in self-assessment. His adjusted net income was above the £50,000 HICBC limit and he was receiving child benefit. In April 2021, an HMRC officer identified a tax shortfall for 2018–19. In January 2023, a different HMRC office issued a discovery assessment for £2,501. His grounds of appeal were: that the retrospective provision in section 97 of the Finance Act 2022 ( FA 2022) was unfair and did not apply to him; the stance in HMRC v Jason Wilkes [2021] UKUT 150 ( TCC) should be adopted that working out adjusted net income is particularly challenging for a PAYE employee with fluctuating pay that HMRC already held all relevant information and ought to have informed him of any additional...

See Q& A: Would the residence nil rate band ( RNRB) be available where a non long-term resident dies leaving UK property (which was their home and valued at £500,000) to their child and where their worldwide estate is valued at £3m but the UK element of the estate is valued at £500k? ie does the taper threshold relate to the worldwide estate or just the UK estate of a non long-term resident individual? Consult the Q& A that explores whether the residence nil rate band ( RNRB) can apply when a non long-term resident dies leaving a UK residence, worth £500,000, to their child, where the overall worldwide estate totals £3m but the UK component is £500k. It asks whether the taper threshold is assessed by reference to the worldwide estate, or confined to the UK estate, for such an...

Lorenz v Caruana and others [2025] EWCA Civ 606 What are the practical implications of this case? The ruling underscores that claims premised on obligations said to arise from spoken discussions will seldom be apt for summary judgment. Here, the supposed duty took the form of a secret trust; nonetheless, the reasoning equally touches claims of purported oral contracts more broadly. It serves as a prompt to advisers that, where a case turns mainly on witness accounts, save in exceptional instances the court will be unable to resolve factual disputes ahead of trial. A bid for summary judgment is therefore unlikely to prosper unless the material refuting the existence of any oral bargain is compelling in the extreme, or the asserted obligation conflicts with a settled legal principle, on both the facts and the law advanced. What was the...

In this issue: Wills Probate Trusts Powers of attorney and advance decisions Court of Protection Spouses, civil partners and cohabitants UK taxes for Private Client HMRC Manuals updates Tax avoidance, evasion and non-compliance Charity and philanthropy Pensions, insurance and tax efficient investments Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland International Question of the week Additional Private Client updates this week Daily and weekly news alerts Lex Talk®Private Client: a Lexis+® community New and updated content Dates for your diary Trackers Latest Q& As Useful information Wills Law Commission publishes recommendations to reform Wills Act 1837 The Law Commission of England and Wales has issued its final report, ‘ Modernising Wills Law’. Volume I presents the recommendations, while Volume II sets out a draft Bill to repeal and...

Accuro Trust ( Switzerland) SA (as trustee of the Tiodab Trust) v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKFTT 464 ( TC) What are the practical implications of this case? With the shift to a residence-based IHT framework and the repeal of the specific statutory rule engaged here ( IHTA 1984, s 48(3)), the forward-looking utility of the FTT’s conclusions is now narrow. That said, the tribunal’s analysis of what counts as excluded property by reference to domicile still matters for live issues, such as arrangements where the settlor of an excluded property trust died before 6 April 2025. More broadly, the decision underlines the need to focus on the intended sense of statutory wording and sheds light on how the FTT reads Parliament’s purpose for the settlements regime. The judge emphasised that terms should carry their ordinary, natural meaning, a point worth...

Paul Baxendale- Walker HMRC cautioned that Paul Baxendale- Walker may incur civil fines or face criminal charges if he fails to cease promoting the arrangements. The avoidance arrangements involved offshore trusts intended to secure tax reliefs absent any bona fide commercial aim. According to HMRC, the schemes he marketed employ intricate frameworks to keep funds accessible to participants while purporting to sidestep tax liabilities. Records from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show Baxendale- Walker was removed from the roll in September 2006. The regulator did not state why the step was taken. Since then, he has worked as a chat show presenter and as an actor and producer in the adult entertainment sector. The government signalled in November 2023, as previously noted by HMRC......

A tribunal on 16 May 2025 confirmed that the NCA’s belief that Mohammed Butt and Mahfooz Begum obtained their income through money laundering stands as correct, and it upheld an earlier court’s decision. The authority said it had sufficient proof drawn from the couple’s lifestyle choices set against their publicly declared earnings. Butt was detained in 2012 on suspicion of money laundering linked to an organised crime group, the ruling noted. He was not charged because there was insufficient evidence, the tribunal added. By contrast, two of his brothers, as well as his two sons, were prosecuted and found guilty of money laundering and drug trafficking offences, according to the judgment......

FTT holds that OIGs and AIPs arising in offshore protected trusts are not protected foreign source income ( Louwman v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKFTT 295 ( TC)) What are the practical implications of this case? This outcome is adverse for former non-domiciled and deemed domiciled individuals who held investments via offshore trusts, including mutual funds that generate OIGs on sale and bond investments that produce AIPs when disposed of through such structures. In effect, the decision means that OIGs and AIPs arising within offshore protected trusts (under the rules in place up to 5 April 2025) are chargeable to tax on the arising basis, rather than being sheltered until distributions are made and matched to the trusts’ capital gains or benefits. From a tax policy perspective, these OIGs and AIPs ought to have been treated as ‘protected foreign source income’—not taxed as they arise, but only when paid out of...

In this issue: Court of Protection Older and vulnerable clients UK taxation for private clients HMRC Manual updates Tax avoidance, evasion and non-compliance Digital assets and crypto-assets Charities and philanthropy Disputed trusts and estates Art and heritage property, landed estates and farming families Pensions, insurance and tax‑efficient investments Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland International matters Weekly question Further Private Client updates this week Daily and weekly news briefings Lex Talk® Private Client: a Lexis+® community New and revised content Trackers Latest Q& A Useful information Court of Protection Court of Protection holds defendant in contempt for intentional breach of supervised contact and communication orders ( CA, In the Matter Of) The court determined that Caroline Grady committed contempt by intentionally violating orders requiring...

Accuro Trust ( Switzerland) SA v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 464 ( TC) The settlor created a trust in Switzerland in September 1992 when he was neither UK domiciled nor deemed domiciled. He contributed funds to the trust up to 6 April 2005, when he became deemed domiciled in the UK. After that date, the settlor injected a cash sum into the trust. Once a ten-year anniversary had passed, the trustee computed and paid a ten-year anniversary charge of £1.7m on the footing that the assets were relevant property and not excluded property by virtue of section 48(3) of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984 ( IHTA 1984) as then in force. However, in September 2014, two years after the ten-year anniversary, they revised their position and applied for a repayment related to the ten-year charge accounted for under regime......

Morgan Lloyd Trustees Ltd v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKUT 00102 ( TCC) What are the practical implications of this case? This appeal underlines that, notwithstanding a legal error identified by the UT—here, the FTT’s misdirection about the proper test for identifying the contract’s ‘commercial context’—the UT retains a choice as to whether the decision should be overturned. Against that backdrop, the UT’s treatment of how the relevant agreements ought to be construed, and its assessment of the findings of fact made by the FTT (valuation material included), is noteworthy. Accordingly, the UT focused on the words actually used and on the FTT’s recorded findings, rather than substituting a broader commercial gloss. That emphasis shaped the result reached in Formwise in practice. In relation to Formwise, despite the FTT’s decision being tainted by an error of law, the UT determined that the parties were to be...

Weis v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2025] UKFTT 348 ( TC) What was the background? This matter concerned the Appellant’s domicile for tax purposes, namely Mr Aubrey Weis, who was born and brought up in Salford, Manchester. His father, Pinkas Rudolph Weis ( PRW), fled Eastern Europe and settled in Salford in 1939. As a Jewish family, they were not safe there and had to escape. PRW lectured in Semitics at Manchester University and built a small portfolio of properties. In 1972 he left the UK, said to be retiring to Israel (though he also became a naturalised US citizen). The Appellant lived in Israel from 1967 to 1970, but returned to Salford as a newly married man; soon after, he started a family and began his own property career. He maintained that he always intended to retire to Israel on reaching 75. He...

Question of the week: Where a testator was domiciled in jurisdiction A, and not within England and Wales, both when they executed their Will and later when they entered into a valid marriage in that jurisdiction, which system of law determines whether that marriage has revoked the......

FTT determines discovery assessment invalid in relation to R& D relief claim ( Realbuzz Group Ltd v HMRC) Realbuzz Group Ltd v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 493 ( TC) The company submitted an amended return for the accounting period ending 30 April 2020 that included a claim for R& D relief, supported by an R& D report spanning multiple projects. Its return for the year to 30 April 2021 likewise featured an R& D relief claim. HMRC opened an enquiry into the 2021 return and, in 2023, issued a closure notice rejecting that claim. It also raised an assessment for 2020 on the basis that some of the 2021 projects had commenced in 2019, which meant the 2020 return would have contained errors. It was accepted that the 2020 claim was excessive and that HMRC had made a discovery. The sole point for the FTT was the...