TC09548 - [2025] UKFTT 00700 (TC)

On 13 February 2025, HMRC made the F&B Application, which included an application for an extension of time (“EoT”) to provide their SoC. Attached was a small bundle of documents, which included the Appellant’s grounds of appeal and recent correspondence between HMRC and PwC.

The F&B Application contained three grounds. Ground 1 was that:

“The Appellant should be required, as is standard where they bear the burden of proof, to clearly set out why it is that they say that the Appeal is brought and specify why they say the Respondents’ decision is not correct. It will not do to inverse the burden of proof and then allege the Respondents have failed to particularise their conclusion.”

Ground 2 began by saying that “The Appellant has known or at least now knows for certain that HMRC considers that tax is due under the Salaried Member Rules”, and then said:

“The Appellant is in a far more favourable position to particularise which of the three conditions [A to C] they assert are not met in their grounds of appeal, thus narrowing the issues in the appeal.”

The Ground continued by saying that “it was impossible for HMRC to respond to the Appellant’s case” and it was “highly prejudicial to HMRC that they do not know the case that they have to meet”. HMRC cited Rapid Brickwork v HMRC [2015] UKFTT 190 (“Rapid Brickwork”), an earlier decision of mine; Bluecrest v HMRC [2025] EWCA Civ 23 (“Bluecrest”), and Unicorn Shipping Ltd v HMRC [2017] UKFTT 464 (TC).

Ground 3 was that, although HMRC accepted that the burden was on them to justify the out of time determinations, the Appellant was nevertheless “required to say why they consider the determination to be out of time” (HMRC’s emphasis).