Dave Chaplin explains why, in the light of Kaye Adams’ battle against the tax man, he is campaigning for a Taxpayer Bill of Rights
After a nine-year battle and HMRC’s fourth attempt to try to convince a tax tribunal that broadcaster Kaye Adams was a ‘disguised employee’, on 29 November 2023 Judge Beare’s decision pointed to the same conclusion reached by three other hearings – that the tax authorities had wrongly accused Ms Adams of being a tax avoider. It didn’t matter how hard HMRC tried to apply its ‘Policy View’ on tax status. The courts repeatedly told them they were wrong.
HMRC suffered from myopia
Readers who have explored status law will know that it’s a bizarre area of tax which, to the layman, appears simple – “surely it should be easy to define a test for whether someone is employed or not?”
Alas it isn’t, and HMRC spent nine years trying to make it so simple that the common law test they tried to get the Court of Appeal to sanction would have meant everyone was “employed for tax purposes”. One ambitious argument HMRC ran at the Court of Appeal was even dismissed as “myopic”.
Download the full article below: