Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

UT (Tax & Chancery) UT/2022/0092 - [2024] UKUT 00373 (TCC)

Fecha: 29-May-2024

Tower One’s submissions

Tower One’s submissions

33.

Ms Shaw submitted that the FTT’s conclusion at [87] is predicated on four errors of law which we summarise as follows:

(1)

as the arrangements entered into did not in fact achieve their aim of producing a tax-free “step-up”, they should not be regarded as “arrangements of which the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, is the avoidance of liability to tax”;

(2)

it cannot be said that the purpose of the arrangements “is” the avoidance of liability to tax where the avoidance in question was contingent on there being a future sale of units in the Tower, ie avoidance of a liability to tax in the future does not fall within paragraph 2(4A);

(3)

the FTT confused “the intended effect” of the arrangements with the “purpose” of the arrangements; and

(4)

even if the avoidance of liability to tax was a purpose of the arrangements, it was not one of the “main” purposes of the arrangements.

34.

Ms Shaw emphasised the FTT’s findings of fact at [41] to [47], which included (having stated at [45] that the CT advantage was “on any view a very significant amount”) that “the Tribunal proceeds on the basis that the group would not have transferred the Tower to the Appellant solely for the corporation tax advantage if there had been no other commercial reason for doing so” (at [46]).