Here is another scheme that has gone up in smoke.
I have a feeling over the next two or three years that HMRC are going to concentrate more and more on the so called tax avoidance schemes being promoted by various firms specialising in this.
We recently got a letter from one such firm offering us huge commissions to sell their scheme to our clients.
The joke was, amongst all the lavish reports and promises there appeared a little tiny clause that says basically we don’t accept any responsibility whatsoever for this scheme.
My client, a premier league footballer, who had asked us to look at the scheme rejected it simply on this basis. And he was right to.
Because all these schemes are quite frankly nonsense.
But here I read this article which I have included the link for because I think it’s rather interesting. He paid £200,000 to get this aggressive tax avoidance scheme instated but then he had the temerity to sue his accountants Harben Barker, a very, very respected company, blaming them for not advising him to take specialist tax advice as he would have declared himself to be non-resident.
Initially he won but of course it was all about insurance companies then, negligence claims are handled by insurance companies and frankly they will look at it purely on the basis of how much it is going to cost.
Anyway it was overturned in the High Court I am pleased to say and the accountants, who must have been under tremendous pressure and so annoyed of being accused of this sort of behaviour, and quite rightly they have been cleared of any negligence whatsoever.
An absolutely amazing case however but interesting to read. As I say I have included the link to the article below.
