Dr Stephen Daly

The issues surrounding the Mansworth v Jelley losses plow on. In the case of HMRC v Hely-Hutchinson, the taxpayer claims that he is entitled to the benefit of HMRC guidance which provided that losses could be claimed as a result of the 2003 Mansworth v Jelley case. HMRC’s response is that the guidance was wrong; that it is lawful for the body to correct that mistake and that the taxpayer should not accordingly be entitled to the benefit of the erroneous guidance. The taxpayer succeeded before the High Court, as I explained in a lengthy case note for the British Tax Review. The result was reversed however in the Court of Appeal. A short case note that I wrote on the Court of Appeal judgment has now been published by the Cambridge Law Journal and is available to read here (a pre-publication version is available here). The taxpayer has sought to appeal that judgment and the decision on permission to appeal is still outstanding (the latest permission to appeal results from May to June 2018 do not contain the case).