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Conference
Meeting Points
JOHN HIDDLESTON, Senior Tax Consultant at Chiltern plc, reports on the recent Tolley conference 'Disclosure of Tax and VAT Avoidance Schemes'.
What is privileged?
Conference
Meeting Points
JOHN HIDDLESTON, Senior Tax Consultant at Chiltern plc, reports on the recent Tolley conference 'Disclosure of Tax and VAT Avoidance Schemes'.
What is privileged?
Patrick Cannon of 24 Old Buildings was of the opinion that the recent amendment to the DOTAS regulations does not succeed in its declared aim of putting lawyers and non-lawyers on an equal footing in the light of legal professional privilege. He explained that it is the information rather than the lawyer which is privileged. In his view, this means that the change to the rules whereby it is now the user rather than the lawyer who has to disclose simply fails (see also 'Levelling Down', the Comment article in this issue of Taxation).
Disproportionate
Roderick Cordara QC of Essex Court believed that the VAT disclosure rules are vulnerable to a challenge on the ground that they are disproportionate in European law terms. They not only catch avoidance but also legitimate planning. In Mr Cordara's view, a penalty based system designed to gather information about innocent people merely exercising their rights is not acceptable.
Penalty takers
Several speakers and members of the audience expressed confusion as to why the penalties in the direct tax rules had been set at a level which was derisorily small so far as purveyors of large-scale avoidance schemes were concerned but yet disturbingly large from the perspective of small practitioners.
Aux barricades!
John Tallon QC of Pump Court Tax Chambers saw a DOTAS régime which only worked if everyone (tax advisers, taxpayers and the fiscal authorities) tempered its inadequacies with commonsense.
Indeed the whole tax system only worked if tax advisers both used commonsense and co-operated with the fiscal authorities. Mr Tallon wondered whether we were now close to the point where tax advisers would rebel and withdraw that co-operation. Mr Tallon even wondered whether we were not at the point where such a rebellion might now be a good thing.
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