{"id":47123,"date":"2014-09-04T10:54:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T10:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=af856c91f2b4d7bdad4bde983db87935"},"modified":"2014-09-04T10:54:12","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T10:54:12","slug":"news-story-no-immunity-from-tax-for-vaccine-avoidance-scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=47123","title":{"rendered":"News story: No immunity from tax for vaccine avoidance scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Investors in the scheme used a Jersey-registered limited partnership which claimed to be involved in creating and exploiting intellectual property from research into vaccines against diseases such as <abbr title=\"human immunodeficiency virus\">HIV<\/abbr>, flu, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B.<\/p>\n<p>The Vaccine Research Limited Partnership scheme, promoted by Matrix Structured Finance, sought to exploit a tax relief for spending on research and development (<abbr title=\"research and development\">R&amp;D<\/abbr>) by claiming back all the tax due on an alleged investment of \u00a3114 million and a first year trading loss of \u00a3193 million.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Upper Tribunal has now backed an <a rel=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.financeandtaxtribunals.gov.uk\/judgmentfiles\/j6980\/TC02491.pdf\">earlier First-tier Tribunal (<abbr title=\"First-tier Tribunal\">FTT<\/abbr>) ruling<\/a> in HM Revenue and Customs\u2019 (<abbr title=\"HM Revenue and Customs\">HMRC<\/abbr>) favour, finding that only \u00a314 million had been spent on <abbr title=\"research and development\">R&amp;D<\/abbr>. <\/p>\n<p>David Gauke, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"last-child\">This is the latest in a series of <abbr title=\"HM Revenue and Customs\">HMRC<\/abbr> tribunal wins over avoidance schemes whose members try to exploit the rules for partnerships rather than accept their responsibilities as taxpayers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"last-child\"><abbr title=\"HM Revenue and Customs\">HMRC<\/abbr> relentlessly pursues those who avoid tax and won\u2019t hesitate to litigate if necessary. Investors in avoidance schemes should know by now that, if their case does go to the courts, they\u2019re likely to lose.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Upper Tribunal ruling in <abbr title=\"HM Revenue and Customs\">HMRC<\/abbr> vs the partners of Vaccine Research Limited Partnership will be published on <a rel=\"external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.financeandtaxtribunals.gov.uk\">http:\/\/www.financeandtaxtribunals.gov.uk<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A tax avoidance scheme which abused the reliefs offered for research into life-saving vaccines to claim back \u00a377 million in tax has been rejected again by a tribunal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47123"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}