TC09583 - [2025] UKFTT 00865 (TC)

We start with an observation that neither party’s case was particularly attractive. The Appellant acknowledges (at least for the purposes of this appeal) that it claimed credits to which it was not entitled and which were netted off against their acknowledged and reported liability to SDIL thereby reducing the amount actually paid to HMRC to a sum less than it should have been. Nevertheless, the Appellant contends that HMRC cannot collect the levy which has thereby gone unpaid. Equally offensively HMRC acknowledge that the statutory instruments they prepared and laid before Parliament do not include any express mechanism to withdraw claims to SDIL credit in respect of which there is no entitlement. Whilst HMRC’s case is that taken as a whole and by reference to the scheme of the statutory provisions there is nothing strictly missing from the regime, if we find otherwise, they simply invite us to imply the missing mechanisms and make the regime work according to Parliament’s “obvious” intention.