Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

UT/2024/000070 - [2025] UKUT 00210 (TCC)

Fecha: 25-Mar-2025

Grounds of appeal

Grounds of appeal

24.

With permission of the FTT, the Appellant appeals on the following six grounds of appeal:

(1)

The FTT’s 14-month delay in producing its decision was unacceptable and impaired its function.

(2)

No person acting judicially and properly instructed on relevant law could have come to the determination under appeal.

(3)

The FTT adopted an erroneous approach to evidential standard in reliance on the Court of Appeal judgment in Tui which had been overturned by the Supreme Court before release of the FTT’s decision.

(4)

The FTT wrongly relied on terms of VAT Notice 725 to exclude the P&O boarding cards and other supplementary evidence.

(5)

The FTT failed to apply EU law (the effectiveness principle).

(6)

The FTT failed to find evidence of a commercial system (in order words that there was a common pattern to the transactions which if the FTT ought to have to taken account so that despite the absence of evidence in relation to certain transactions the Appellant had still shown them to be removals).

25.

Mr Southern KC who appeared for the Appellant highlighted Ground 2 as the Appellant’s main focus, with the errors under Grounds 1 and 3 to 6 being said to compound the Ground 2 error. He also helpfully clarified that Ground 1 was not put as a freestanding ground of appeal but was argued to have impaired the ability of the FTT to perform its statutory function and to have “contributed to the other grounds of appeal”. In the light of both these points we shall address Ground 2 first and consider Ground 1 once we have considered and reached a preliminary view on Grounds 2-5.