One minute with Waqar Shah, Head of Tax Disputes & Investigations at Kingsley Napley.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
A genuine mix of contentious tax work. There has been a recent increase in VAT disputes, with several heading towards lengthy hearings in the First-tier Tribunal. This is in addition to IR35-related work that we are hoping to resolve at mediation, some unpicking of historic SDLT structures and investigations for high-net worth clients spanning several jurisdictions. I am also working with our criminal team on matters beyond COP 9. So, a good mix of tax technical cases and those requiring wider tactical thinking.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
I wish I knew how much of my time would be spent telling colleagues: ‘No, as a tax disputes lawyer, I cannot do your tax return – nor do I want to’.
More seriously, at the start of my career, one of the senior tax partners told the NQs: ‘Welcome to tax – you will not be useful for at least 20 years!’ For a short time, I thought he might be right, but I did not let that dictate my approach.
When starting out, it is easy to view tax law as a series of rigid, black-and-white statutes to be debated academically. The reality is that resolving tax matters often requires more human considerations, particularly where there are potential reputational consequences.
Any new trends you’re seeing in tax?
Clients are constantly facing seemingly innocuous enquiries that spiral into widespread investigations into their historic tax affairs. Many of these seemingly emanate from HMRC’s use of open-source information (including the Connect software), alongside exchanging information with different tax authorities. This includes an uptick in compliance checks on HNWIs, online content creators and businesses failing to publish formal tax strategies.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
As I argued in ‘HMRC’s Litigation and Settlement Strategy: overdue for reform’ (Tax Journal, 27 May 2026), I would look at the scope of the Litigation & Settlement Strategy, and give HMRC – with input from others in HMG where relevant – room to consider not only the tax at stake, but also the time needed to recover it, public interest factors, and the legal fees likely to be incurred when deciding whether to settle.
There are significant policy reasons for the status quo, but can anyone truly say that every matter reaching the FTT could not, or should not, have been resolved earlier? That would also allow unavoidable litigation to proceed more quickly.
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Bolt Services UK Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 720 was an interesting one. Despite the taxpayer’s success in the FTT and its defence of that position in the Upper Tribunal, the Court of Appeal seemingly narrowed the scope of the Tour Operators’ Margin Scheme (TOMS).
The court focused on how comparable Bolt’s services were to those supplied by tour operators and travel agents, concluding that they were ‘neither identical nor relevantly comparable’. This displaced the ‘high level’ approach taken by the lower courts.
TOMS is an exception to the usual VAT rules and should be construed narrowly. Whether this reaches the Supreme Court remains to be seen.
You might not know this about me but...
I once survived an attack from the largest type of shark in the world, despite not being able to swim very well. If this were a LinkedIn post, I would probably be expected to draw comparisons with challenging HMRC, but I will spare Tax Journal readers that.
One minute with Waqar Shah, Head of Tax Disputes & Investigations at Kingsley Napley.
What’s keeping you busy at work?
A genuine mix of contentious tax work. There has been a recent increase in VAT disputes, with several heading towards lengthy hearings in the First-tier Tribunal. This is in addition to IR35-related work that we are hoping to resolve at mediation, some unpicking of historic SDLT structures and investigations for high-net worth clients spanning several jurisdictions. I am also working with our criminal team on matters beyond COP 9. So, a good mix of tax technical cases and those requiring wider tactical thinking.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your career?
I wish I knew how much of my time would be spent telling colleagues: ‘No, as a tax disputes lawyer, I cannot do your tax return – nor do I want to’.
More seriously, at the start of my career, one of the senior tax partners told the NQs: ‘Welcome to tax – you will not be useful for at least 20 years!’ For a short time, I thought he might be right, but I did not let that dictate my approach.
When starting out, it is easy to view tax law as a series of rigid, black-and-white statutes to be debated academically. The reality is that resolving tax matters often requires more human considerations, particularly where there are potential reputational consequences.
Any new trends you’re seeing in tax?
Clients are constantly facing seemingly innocuous enquiries that spiral into widespread investigations into their historic tax affairs. Many of these seemingly emanate from HMRC’s use of open-source information (including the Connect software), alongside exchanging information with different tax authorities. This includes an uptick in compliance checks on HNWIs, online content creators and businesses failing to publish formal tax strategies.
If you could make one change to tax, what would it be?
As I argued in ‘HMRC’s Litigation and Settlement Strategy: overdue for reform’ (Tax Journal, 27 May 2026), I would look at the scope of the Litigation & Settlement Strategy, and give HMRC – with input from others in HMG where relevant – room to consider not only the tax at stake, but also the time needed to recover it, public interest factors, and the legal fees likely to be incurred when deciding whether to settle.
There are significant policy reasons for the status quo, but can anyone truly say that every matter reaching the FTT could not, or should not, have been resolved earlier? That would also allow unavoidable litigation to proceed more quickly.
Has a recent tax case caught your eye?
The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Bolt Services UK Ltd [2026] EWCA Civ 720 was an interesting one. Despite the taxpayer’s success in the FTT and its defence of that position in the Upper Tribunal, the Court of Appeal seemingly narrowed the scope of the Tour Operators’ Margin Scheme (TOMS).
The court focused on how comparable Bolt’s services were to those supplied by tour operators and travel agents, concluding that they were ‘neither identical nor relevantly comparable’. This displaced the ‘high level’ approach taken by the lower courts.
TOMS is an exception to the usual VAT rules and should be construed narrowly. Whether this reaches the Supreme Court remains to be seen.
You might not know this about me but...
I once survived an attack from the largest type of shark in the world, despite not being able to swim very well. If this were a LinkedIn post, I would probably be expected to draw comparisons with challenging HMRC, but I will spare Tax Journal readers that.
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