£9m goes West

It’s a long time since HMRC’s press releases were usefully informative. Too often now they are simply misleading.

Bristol & West plc v HMRC [2014] UKUT 0073 (TCC) was a recent case in which HMRC’s amendment to the taxpaying company’s return was rejected in its entirety by the Upper Tribunal due to a simple error by an HMRC official resulting in the loss of £9.2m in tax. The error was compounded by a lackadaisical failure to take a basic step which would have prevented the loss. One can see that HMRC would be embarrassed by such a mistake but I was astonished at its effrontery in publishing a press release on the case boasting about the taxpayer’s defeat and claiming for itself a notable victory.

The case concerned a tax avoidance scheme...