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Prejudice to HMRC
Prejudice to HMRC
There will be little or no prejudice to HMRC if we were to reinstate. In light of the best judgement concession, the fact that the assessing officer will be unavailable to give evidence is of no relevance or negligible weight.
To ameliorate any prejudice to HMRC concerning the fact that LP has already spent a day giving evidence, the appellant proposes that LP will still act as their expert witness, and will simply supply a further, short, witness statement, dealing with the matters raised in Ms Wong’s note of his evidence, on which he can then be cross examined by HMRC’s counsel. This should not take long and gives HMRC the chance to challenge any changes made by LP to his original report arising from the answers that he gave in cross examination at the hearing.
Any financial consequences to HMRC can be compensated for by an appropriate costs order. This can compensate HMRC for any additional preparation time.
HMRC claim that a new hearing will be inconvenient as they will have to allocate time and resources to an appeal which they could justifiably have considered had been determined. This does not reflect any substantive prejudice to the interests of justice.
- Heading
- INTRODUCTION
- THE LAW
- Pierhead
- THE EVIDENCE AND THE FACTS
- Mr Borthwick’s written evidence
- There would also be reputational consequences if the assessment and penalty were not successfully appealed He thought LP’s evidence on the Monday “went well”
- He asked her to make the reinstatement application which she did Mr Borthwick’s oral evidence
- The reliability of Mr Bortwick’s evidence
- THE POST HEARING CONCESSION
- DISCUSSION
- When exercising discretion under Rule 2, we should consider the principle set out in Pierhead and in particular whether HMRC would be prejudiced by the reinstatement, what loss there would be to the a
- Prejudice to HMRC
- Loss to the appellant
- Merits
- The appellant’s grounds of appeal and skeleton argument make out a strong prima facie case Mr Borthwick’s evidence was that he was advised by counsel that he had a strong (60:40) case
- The overall balancing exercise When exercising our discretion under Rule 2, an important consideration is the reason why the appellant withdrew its appeal
- The balance of prejudice weighs heavily in dismissing the application to reinstate The FTT’s decision in Rolls Group & Others v HMRC [2015] UKFTT 0404 (“ Rolls ”) citing Pierhead is authority for a number of propositions. Reinstatement is a matter of
- She couched her submissions for opposing the application under a number of headings as set out below No automatic right to reinstatement
- No good reasons
- And the real reason for reinstatement is that he has had an opinion from Dr Willets that the company has a better chance in the appeal than it had been given following those discussions with counsel
- Prejudice to the parties
- Merits
- The overriding objective
- Our view
- The factors
- The balancing exercise
- Conclusions