[2025] UKUT 061 (AAC)

The Tribunal said in paragraph [26] of its statement of reasons that the claimant had been “undertaking the enterprise of futures trading” since about 2002. In paragraph [30] it referred to the claimant “undertaking the enterprise or practice of futures trading”. It may be inferred from these statements that the Tribunal accepted that the claimant was “engaged in carrying on a trade, profession or vocation”. The waters are muddied in paragraph [34], where the Tribunal says that while being a futures trader “could be seen as a possible valid form of employment or self-employment”, here the claimant was “not able to show that he is undertaking transactions on behalf of anyone other than himself”. Because the Tribunal is here addressing the issue of whether what the claimant does amounts to “employment or self-employment” it isn’t clear which element of the definition of “self-employed” the Tribunal thought that the claimant’s lack of clients was inconsistent with.

Reading the Tribunal’s reasons as a whole, I am satisfied that the Tribunal accepted that the claimant’s trading amounted to a trade. Certainly, it made no finding that the claimant’s activities were in any way “bogus” or a sham, and it appears from what it said at paragraph [42] of its statement of reasons that the Tribunal’s rejection that the claimant was self-employed turned on its not being persuaded that the claimant’s activities were carried out “on a “commercial” basis or with a view to “realisation of profits”, rather than because it wasn’t a trade (or profession of vocation).