Read on Twitter
A function of the Tax Professionals Forum is to keep retroactive tax legislation under review. It has suggested some guiding principles, details of which can be found on pages 43-45 of Philip Baker QC’s article. To summarise: /1 https://twitter.com/keithmgordon/status/1360202644741103616
Retroactive tax legislation is only permitted in cases of manifest error where that error cannot be resolved by the courts eg thru construction /2
Retroactive tax legislation is also permitted in cases of abusive tax avoidance schemes. However, it should rarely be necessary in these circumstances, since such schemes ought to be picked up by HMRC via DOTAS or the GAAR /3
Retroactive tax legislation is also permitted where it has become clear that the tax rules in question as generally understood by HMRC and the tax profession have changed (so that the previous general understanding was erroneous) /4
In all cases, there needs to be a public interest justification for its use, and the amount of revenue to be gained significant (if I’ve understood correctly) /5
The Tax Professionals Forum only meets twice a year, and judging from the date of the minutes of their last meeting, it seems that a meeting is now overdue. You can find out more about them at this link: /ENDS https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/tax-professionals-forum
