TC09622 - [2025] UKFTT 01232 (TC)

The Tribunal is not required to conduct a mini-hearing (per Martland) but should consider any obvious strengths or weakness of the substantive case in assessing all of the circumstances of the case.

It was contended that Mr Ahya had a strong case, that it had been shown that he did not owe any tax for the years in question. The support for this was the table of figures included by Mr Ahya in his letter of 8 March 2024 to HMRC. The figures were stated to have been provided by “well-regarded accountants”, although the Tribunal had no evidence as to who these accountants were (a name was included in Mr Ahya’s witness statement, but it was not clear whether this individual had been instructed to prepare the figures included in that letter) and the bundle contained no documents prepared by accountants to support the figures in the letter of 8 March 2024, nor any evidence from accountants. We also consider that if Mr Ahya had taken advice from well-regarded accountants in preparing these figures that they would have advised him that he needed to appeal the notices rather than submit tax returns for periods which they would have known were out of time to be submitted.

It was also contended that, as the figures showed that Mr Ahya had no profit from the property rentals, there was no requirement to notify HMRC and submit returns. The support for this was a page of an HMRC manual which was published in April 2016. The submissions did not make any reference to statutory requirements for reporting income from property. There was no evidence that Mr Ahya had made any enquiries as to his reporting obligations during the tax years in question.

HMRC have submitted that the assessments were based on information available to them and that Mr Ahya failed to engage meaningfully during the enquiry. It was not disputed that the assessments were validly raised; the dispute was with the quantum.

We note, again, that we are not to conduct a mini-hearing but consider that the evidence before us does not show that Mr Ahya has such a strong case that it should weigh heavily in favour of giving permission to appeal out of time. Unevidenced figures, which on the face of it indicate that Mr Ahya’s property rental business involved deductible repayments of interest in excess of Mr Ahya’s combined rental income and net employment income, in addition to other costs, for a considerable number of years cannot support such a conclusion.

Accordingly, the merits of the case are not obviously particularly strong and we consider that there is limited weight to be placed upon this in evaluating all of the circumstances.