VAT planning after Ocean Finance

• The taxpayer restructured his business to mitigate his VAT liabilities.
• The First-tier Tribunal asked itself the wrong questions.
• The CJEU focused on whether the arrangements reflected economic reality.
• The Court of Appeal remitted the case to the First-tier Tribunal.
• Relocating a business should not inevitably be characterised as an abuse of law.
• The ghost of Halifax continues to haunt taxpayers.

Sisyphus was punished for his craftiness in avoiding death by being condemned to repeatedly to roll a boulder up a hill only for it roll down again as soon as he had reached the summit.

After the Court of Appeal’s judgment in CRC v P...