UK Tax Update October 2023

In this article for the October edition of French estate planning journal Ingénierie Patrimoniale, Edward Reed, George Mitkov and Quentin Oyon look at recent developments in the UK.

• Information notices: in the case of A Foreign National v HMRC, the First-Tier Tax Tribunal upheld a schedule 36 notice issued by HMRC to a non-resident landlord, rejecting the taxpayer's arguments that (i) HMRC's previous issue of a jeopardy amendment meant that HMRC could not reasonably require further information and (ii) the notice in fact related to the taxpayer's family or amounted to a fishing expedition.
• Artificial tax planning: the Court of Appeal made it clear (in Bhaur v Equity First Trustees) that the courts are unlikely to set aside a transaction on the grounds of mistake, where a claimant entered into the transaction for artificial tax planning purposes but mispredicted or mistook the tax consequences that followed – even where the financial consequences for