In 1997 Parliament enacted provisions curtailing the statutory limitation period for VAT claims doing so without notice and retrospectively to the date of their announcement. The CJEU held this to be unlawful in its 2002 judgment in Marks & Spencer [2002] ECR I-6325.
A year or so later in 2004 Parliament enacted provisions curtailing the limitation period for restitutionary claims for overpaid taxes based on mistake again without notice and again retrospectively to the date of the announcement (FA 2004 s 320).
An uninitiated observer might be forgiven for thinking that the two enactments were indistinguishable. The same observer might also be forgiven for thinking that FA 2007 s 107 by which Parliament returned to complete the job by limiting claims already made before the 2004 enactment was even more objectionable.
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