In Else Refining & Recycling v HMRC (FTC/86/2012 – 10 January 2014) the UT had to consider an appeal against a decision of the FTT holding that the taxpayer should have known that transactions he had entered into were connected with MTIC fraud.
The tribunal referred to the decisions of the ECJ in Kittel v Etat Belge (C-440/04) and of the Court of Appeal in Mobilx Ltd v HMRC [2010] EWCA Civ 517. The ultimate question was ‘whether the trader should have known that the only reasonable explanation for the circumstances in which his transaction took place was that it was connected to fraudulent evasion of VAT’.
The main ground of appeal was that the FTT’s decision had not been open to it on the evidence. The FTT had essentially relied on two facts; the transactions were ‘too good to be true’ and the trader had undertaken insufficient due...
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