HMRC loses appeal over Tenon tax avoidance scheme

The Upper Tribunal judge said: ‘It is not necessary that the hypothetical [HMRC] officer should understand precisely how a scheme works…All that is needed is that from the information made available…he can reasonably be expected to be aware of the insufficiency of tax such as to justify an assessment.

‘In our judgment, as well as an officer being aware of the matters, amended in respect of the small amounts of income that were declared, he would also have been sufficiently aware of the law relating to second-hand insurance policies to be able to appreciate the unusual nature of the entries in the return.’