The surrender of a lease can be treated as the transfer of a business as a going concern (TOGC), HMRC have announced.

The news follows Robinson Family Ltd (TC2046), in which the First-tier Tribunal held that the grant of a lease could be a TOGC in some circumstances and indicated it was necessary to look at the substance of the transaction rather than its form

The Revenue issued Revenue & Customs Brief (RCB) 30/12 in response to the case and has now published the follow-up, RCB 27/14, which covers the findings of a review of the surrender of leases.

The department decided there …