28 June 2024
The UK general election will take place next week on Thursday 4 July 2024. In the run up to the election, UK political parties have published their manifestos setting out policy proposals for if they were to be in government. These included those of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK, the Green Party, the Scottish National Party, and Plaid Cymru.
If you missed it last week, you can now watch on demand our EMEA Dbriefs webcast UK General Election 2024, where our panel discussed some of the key tax policy and trade aspects contained within the manifestos and how the election may affect your business.
In 2006, telent Technology Services Limited (‘telent’) placed funds in escrow for the future funding of its occupational pension scheme and recovered input tax on fees paid for investment advice. In 2014, HMRC issued an assessment to recover that input tax for the periods 11/10 to 05/14. telent appealed the assessment (the ‘Assessment Appeal’), but subsequently withdrew that appeal. Six months later, having changed professional advisers, telent renewed its argument for input tax recovery, and made a claim for the periods 08/12 to 08/16. HMRC ultimately conceded that telent was entitled to input tax recovery in principle, but argued that the new claim could not overlap the period dealt with in the Assessment Appeal. telent appealed this decision (the ‘Claim Appeal’). The Upper Tribunal has upheld the First-tier Tribunal’s decision that telent was prevented from re-litigating the overlap period.
The basis of telent’s first ground of appeal was that HMRC had acquiesced in telent bringing the Claim Appeal or were otherwise estopped from raising the procedural issue of the overlap period. The First-tier Tribunal had found that there had been no detriment to telent from HMRC raising the issue of the overlap period “late in the day”. Accordingly, the Upper Tribunal held that HMRC were not barred from raising this procedural issue. telent’s other grounds of appeal related to whether telent was prevented from re-litigating the overlap period. Under section 85 VAT Act 1994, on withdrawal of the Assessment Appeal, the First-tier Tribunal was deemed to have determined that the input tax in question was not allowable and this included the input tax for the overlap period. Accordingly, telent was not able to re-litigate the issue, and the Upper Tribunal dismissed telent’s appeal. (Contact: Oliver Jarratt)
The OECD has announced that Algeria signed the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS MLI) on 27 June 2024, becoming the 103rd jurisdiction to join the BEPS MLI. Algeria’s provisional list of notifications is available here (in French), and it is expected that the operation of the 2015 UK-Algeria Double Taxation Convention will be modified in due course once the MLI is ratified by Algeria.
The next EMEA Dbriefs tax webcast will be on Tuesday 9 July 2024 at 12:00 BST/13:00 CEST. Worker rights – what next following the general election?, hosted by Helen Kaye, will be from our Global Mobility and Employment Taxes series. Our panel will examine the potential impact the UK general election may have on worker rights, reflecting on the manifesto promises of the incoming government and the timing of possible changes.