Haworth: Court of Appeal quashes follower and accelerated payment notices

In R (Haworth) v HMRC, the Court of Appeal quashed the follower notice, and the accelerated payment notice based on it, because the final judicial ruling underpinning the follower notice was not ‘relevant’ to the taxpayer’s arrangements for the purposes of issuing a follower notice. For taxpayers generally, this decision means that, in order for HMRC to issue a valid follower notice, HMRC must: (a) ensure that the final judicial ruling it seeks to apply to another taxpayer’s arrangements actually contains a relevant principle or reasoning that can be applied to the other taxpayer’s arrangements; and (b) have a substantial degree of confidence that the principle or reasoning in the ruling would deny the asserted tax advantage of the other taxpayer’s arrangements.