Reader feedback: The meaning of ‘business’ for CGT and IHT purposes

Dear sir

In commenting upon two recent decisions of the Upper Tribunal (‘What is a business?’) Peter Vaines draws the conclusion that a tension has been created between the meaning of ‘business’ for the purposes of CGT and for IHT.

In Ramsay v HMRC [2013] UKUT 0226 (TCC) the Upper Tribunal held that letting flats was a business for the purposes of TCGA 1992 s 162 (transfer of a business to a company) the FTT having held that it was not. In The Zetland Settlement v HMRC [2013] UKFTT 284 (TC) the Upper Tribunal held that the letting of an office building did not attract BPR. There is in fact no conflict here: the question for BPR purposes was not whether the letting was a business but whether the business consisted ‘wholly or mainly’ of making investments. Thus it was the...