Documents were not necessary or relevant

The taxpayer applied for judicial review against the lawfulness of HMRC’s decision refusing the taxpayer’s requests for repayment under the disguised remuneration payment scheme.

In essence the repayment scheme was established under FA 2020 s 20 and allowed sums which had been paid to settle disguised remuneration cases to be repaid as long as the taxpayer met particular conditions. One criteria was whether there had been ‘reasonable disclosure’ as defined in s 20(5). Here HMRC refused to make repayment on the basis that this criteria was not met.

In this preliminary hearing the taxpayer sought disclosure of two sets of documents. The first was the background documents which led to the drafting of HMRC’s operational note on how HMRC was to apply the scheme. The Upper Tribunal accepted that the guidance itself – which had already been disclosed – was relevant but said there...