ADR and its role in tax litigation

The updated Litigation and Settlement Strategy, published July 2011, sets out a roadmap to enhance both litigation and settlement as a means of resolving disputes, and the use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques will go a long way to improve the efficiency of both of those processes. There will always be litigation on points of principle, policy and technical uncertainty, and the Courts need to be freed up to pursue such issues without unnecessary delay. But ADR can help achieve this by testing whether an issue is in fact ‘all or nothing’, or whether closure notices can be framed in such a way as to narrow down the point to be litigated to its agreed essentials.