Duty and Customs Column

How much has been settled by the recent decision of the House of Lords in the Greenalls case and is it going to generate even more uncertainty? The point at issue is highly relevant to many of the situations which have been examined by indirect tax commentators in The Tax Journal in recent years. Put simply the question is whether where a consignment of spirits was released from a bonded warehouse where it had been stored under suspension of duty and thereafter was diverted to the retail market in circumstances of fraud so that the relevant duty was never paid the company which owned the warehouse should nevertheless be responsible for...