The interesting but unnecessary tribunal case of MWL International Ltd and Maywal Ltd

Key points

• Twelve company cars mostly kept at the managing director’s house were treated as pool cars.
• An early agreement with HMRC stated that no mileage records were necessary because there would be little private use but it later revised its opinion and said class 1A National Insurance was due.
• The First-tier Tribunal agreed the cars were pool cars and HMRC was not estopped from issuing retrospective NIC decisions.
• The tribunal did not have jurisdiction to decide the legitimate expectation issue.

Pool cars estoppel legitimate expectation ultra vires – these were all discussed in the interesting but unnecessary First-tier Tribunal case of MWL International Ltd and Maywal Ltd (TC9169).

Many aspects of tax were covered in this case which I say was unnecessary because:

• the agreement between HMRC and the taxpayer regarding pool cars was severely flawed and should never have been given in...