CASE SUMMARIES 17 March 1997

The following notes of judgments were prepared by the reporters of the All England Law Reports.

Tax

Plumbly & ors (personal reps of Harbour, decd) v Spencer (HMIT); ChD (Lightman J) 5 Feb 1997.

To qualify for retirement relief on the disposal of business assets under s 69(2)(b) of the Capital Gains Tax Act 1985 (now s 163(2) of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992) the asset disposed of had to have been used in the claimant's business. Land owned personally by the claimant, but leased to the company of which he was a full-time working director, did not satisfy that condition.

Patrick Soares (Markby Hewitt) for the taxpayer; Michael Furness (Inland Revenue).

VAT

Customs & Excise Commrs v British Telecommunications plc; QBD (Dyson J) 5 Feb 1997.

Delivery charges paid with the purchase of business cars from the manufacturers were part of the consideration for the cars within art 11(A)(2)(b) of the Sixth EC Directive (77/388) and were not paid for a separate supply of services, so input tax paid was not recoverable. The charges fell within the "blocking order" (SI 1992/322) disallowing credit for input tax in respect of cars.

Michael Kent QC, Nicholas Randall (Customs & Excise); David Milne QC, Rupert Baldry (Chris Atkinson, British Telecom).

R v Customs & Excise Commrs, ex p Littlewoods Home Shopping Group plc; QBD (Tucker J) 13 Jan 1997.

Customs were not precluded from rescinding undertakings given to mail order companies in 1973, that if they paid VAT pursuant to the special scheme for retailers on credit payments for non-taxable supplies made before VAT came into effect, no VAT would be charged on outstanding credit balances on quitting the scheme.

Kenneth Parker QC (Customs & Excise) for the Crown; David Milne QC, Andrew Hitchmough (Cuff Roberts, Liverpool) for the taxpayers.