A note on “aggressive” tax planning

Such tax planning is often viewed as tax avoidance by HMRC. We do not involve ourselves in such activities, and details of our attitude to aggressive planning are set out here and may be summarised as “Marcus Ward Consultancy Ltd does not market, advise on, or advocate aggressive schemes…“

However, it is worth highlighting a recent announcement made jointly by several professional bodies.  The main bodies are; Chartered Institute of Taxation, Association of Taxation Technicians, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, and Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.  They have issued a revised version of Professional and Ethical standards for tax advisers. The salient new standard is that Members

i) must not create, encourage or promote tax planning arrangements or structures that set out to achieve results that are contrary to the clear intention of Parliament in enacting relevant legislation, and/or

ii) are highly artificial or highly contrived and seek to exploit shortcomings within the relevant legislation.

Breaching this new requirement may result in disciplinary action. The new guidance has been endorsed by HMRC here and full details from our Institute here

You may rest assured that we already refuse to advocate these schemes and are pleased to see the introduction of these new standards.

Please contact us if you have any questions on this matter.