Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

UT (Tax & Chancery) UT/2023/00099 - [2025] UKUT 00013 (TCC)

Fecha: 22-Oct-2024

Introduction

Introduction

This appeal concerns the decision of the Commissioners for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (“HMRC” or “the Respondents”) notified to FS Commercial Ltd (“the Appellant”) on 6 February 2019 to assess it under s.73 Value Added Tax Act 1994 (“VATA”) as follows:

(1)

a preferred assessment for £19,064,622 for periods 05/16 – 11/18 inclusive, on the basis of there being insufficient evidence to support the claims to input tax; and

(2)

an alternative assessment for £15,036,031 for periods 11/16 – 11/18 inclusive, on the basis of inadequate evidence of payment of consideration.

In the course of preparing for the substantive hearing of the Appellant’s appeal before the First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) against the preferred assessment, the Appellant sought to include tens of thousands of invoices in its List of Documents. HMRC objected on the basis that the FTT’s jurisdiction was supervisory, and that as those documents had not been before the HMRC decision maker, they were irrelevant to the substantive issue the FTT had to decide.

On 5 September 2022, the FTT held a preliminary hearing to decide the following two issues:

(1)

whether the FTT’s jurisdiction in the appeal against the preferred assessment was appellate or supervisory; and

(2)

whether the Appellant was entitled to rely, at the substantive hearing, on invoices it did not provide to the HMRC decision-maker.

On 12 July 2023 the FTT issued a decision (“the FTT Decision”) by which it determined both issues in HMRC’s favour, holding that:

(1)

its jurisdiction as regards the input tax appeal was supervisory; and

(2)

the Appellant could not rely on invoices not provided to the HMRC decision-maker.

The Appellant was granted permission to appeal by the FTT on the following two grounds, in the alternative:

(1)

The FTT erred in law when it held that the Grounds of Appeal to the FTT (“the FTT Grounds”) did not include, as one of the Grounds, that the Appellant had held valid VAT invoices at the time of HMRC’s decision (“First Ground of Appeal”).

(2)

The FTT erred in law when it decided that in the absence of a reference in the FTT Grounds by the Appellant to it holding valid invoices, the jurisdiction was supervisory (“Second Ground of Appeal”).

In this Decision, references in square brackets ([]) are to paragraphs of the FTT Decision unless the context indicates that they refer to internal paragraphs of other documents. All legislation and case law is cited only so far as relevant to the issues we have to decide.