[2025] UKUT 00005 (TCC)

Mr Downey explained this ground was linked in some respects to the other grounds. Because HMRC had not advanced any positive case on the contract underlying its assessment the only conclusion available to the FTT was that an earlier contract was made according to the dates put forward by the appellant. That was the conclusion that all of the appellant’s evidence pointed to, there being no evidence adduced by HMRC (that had not been rejected) for an alternative contract date.

As already discussed, there was no requirement for HMRC to make a positive case. This point cannot accordingly form the basis for saying the FTT’s conclusion was perverse. It was, as the FTT correctly identified, for the appellant to show a contract for disposal had been made before 3 December 2014.

It was submitted in any event that when the evidence was looked at in its totality, in circumstances where all the evidence pointed to the earlier contract which the appellant had put forward, and in the absence of any other contract the FTT’s decision to dismiss the appeal was perverse.

I reject this submission. While the appellant might seek to argue that the evidence was such that the FTT could have found there was a contract by the relevant date it comes nowhere close to showing that the FTT was bound to find a contract was made before such date and that the FTT’s decision was accordingly perverse. As can be seen from the FTT’s detailed findings of fact at [11(1)] to [11(43)], including those already discussed under the ground above, the FTT considered the chronology of events, the evidence advanced on behalf of the appellant, and made findings regarding any intention to transfer the business at given points in time. The FTT was not satisfied, consistent with those findings that it could accept the appellant’s case that a contract had been concluded by the relevant date. The appellant’s ground does not challenge those underlying findings (by articulating how any such findings were ones made without evidence, contrary to the evidence, or were ones that no reasonable tribunal could have made). In the light of those findings it was clearly then open to the FTT to dismiss the appeal. There was also plainly nothing perverse or inconsistent arising from the fact no other contract was specifically identified (in circumstances where disposal was agreed) with a conclusion that the appellant had failed to show a contract had been made before 3 December 2014.