Tax and the City briefing for April 2018

The Court of Appeal confirms in TDS and LGI that the First-tier Tribunal was correct to disallow all the loan relationship debits under the unallowable purpose rule. Loyalty bonus payments were held by the FTT in Hargreaves Lansdown not to be ‘annual payments’ as they do not represent pure income profit. HMRC intends to pilot an enhanced business risk review procedure following its large business consultation. Similar to the structure of the UK’s DOTAS rules, but broader in scope, the EU’s tax transparency rules will require intermediaries to report potentially aggressive cross-border arrangements. HMRC has excluded financial services groups from the cost sharing exemption in response to recent CJEU judgments.