LITIGATION

More than £25 billion of tax was ‘under consideration’ in HMRC’s Large Business Service (LBS) enquiries at 31 March 2011, but the department emphasised that the estimate did not represent tax owed or unpaid.

Richard Clarke and Jessica McLellan provide this month’s update on recent HMRC activity

James Bullock reviews the Budget 2011 Tax Proposals

The Tackling Tax Avoidance strategy document is a useful summary of how HMRC are trying to strangle tax avoidance at birth, and if that does not work how it will hunt down avoiders and ultimately put them through costly litigation.

The government’s efforts to tackle tax avoidance are ‘quite understandable’ but evasion and other criminal activity have a ‘far greater’ impact than legal avoidance, tax experts said in response to a new paper setting out the government’s anti-avoidance strategy.

Peter Mantle on Danfoss and claims against the State

There is ‘little transparency’ for the taxpayer over the way that tax disputes with large companies are resolved, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said as it reported that HMRC had not answered some of its specific questions because of taxpayer...

Andrew James on HMRC v Blue Sphere Global Ltd

The National Audit Office has confirmed that it is in the ‘early stages’ of scoping a review of HMRC’s procedures for resolving tax disputes. Private Eye has linked the NAO’s decision to recent allegations concerning HMRC’s £1.2 billion settlement with Vodafone.

Anthony Inglese and Geoff Lloyd identify three misunderstandings of HMRC's Litigation and Settlements Strategy