In Burlington Loan Management v HMRC [2022] UKFTT 290 (TC) (22 August 2022) the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) held that the appellant was entitled to the exemption from UK withholding tax under the UK/Ireland double tax treaty (DTT) because neither the Cayman seller nor the Irish buyer had a main purpose of taking advantage of the withholding tax exemption provided by the DTT.
Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers International (Europe) (LBIE) a secondary market for its debts developed. In this case LBIE debt was assigned by a Cayman Islands company (SICL) by then in liquidation to the appellant an Irish tax resident company (BLM) through an intermediate assignment to a broker retained by SICL’s liquidators to market the debt claim. Since the £142m principal had already been repaid by LBIE’s liquidators to SICL the debt which was assigned comprised outstanding statutory interest of...
