This week's opinion

The decision of the Supreme Court in De Silva reported on page 6 perhaps marks the end of an extraordinary series of disputes starting with CRC v Cotter [2013] STC 2480 about the way the enquiry regime for loss carry-backs works. A detailed technical analysis of the decision will appear in a later issue of Taxation and I do not want to pre-empt that but I will make some broader comments.

The first is to note how long this has taken to sort out: Mr De Silva’s loss claim related to 1998-99. There are many strands to all of this – much of the time was taken with establishing whether a loss had actually arisen. But nearly 20 years seems extraordinary. More importantly however it shows how critical it is that HMRC powers are set out in law as clearly as possible. The arguments that Mr De Silva’s legal...