CL-2018-000297, CL-2018-000404, CL-2018-000590, - [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm)

The DWF Ds did refer, additionally, to evidence that would support findings that they considered it to be SKAT’s task to assess tax refund claims and decide whether to pay them, that there was a hope that SKAT would decide to pay but (as Mr Horn put it) they had “no way of making that happen”, that they did not know anything of SKAT’s processes or criteria for assessing tax refund claims and deciding whether to pay out on them, and that they did not think it automatic that SKAT would pay out but rather had in mind that SKAT might decline, in which case a question would have arisen whether to seek to challenge SKAT’s refusal, on which at any rate Mr Horn, who alone was asked about it, was “not sure whether the [USPFs] would have wished to pursue that …”. I would make all of those findings. However, whether individually or taken as a whole, they do not undermine the ordinary inference that if false statements material to whether there is an entitlement to a tax refund are knowingly made through the tax reclaim documentation submitted to a tax authority, the intention in doing so is that the tax authority should be influenced by those statements in favour of accepting the claim and paying out.