Tax Evasion in UK Law

Artificiality, if it is to be deployed as a workable legal concept, has to be tested against some standard of transactional normality, and the search for such a standard is far from straightforward. Taxpayers faced with a choice between alternative ways of achieving some commercial objective are in principle entitled to select the one with the more tax-efficient statutory outcome.

To consider the evidence adduced in the Portuguese proceedings is not to re-litigate because what is in issue in these proceedings is not the commission of the specific offences alleged against DG in Portugal but whether on the evidence before this court of the material considered by the Portuguese Court, together with the evidence available to the Spanish Courts and other material not considered by the courts in either jurisdiction, the claimant has proved on the balance of probabilities that DG's wealth was obtained through unlawful conduct of a particular kind or of one of a number of kinds, each of which would have been unlawful conduct: see Section 242 (2) (b) of POCA – that is to say drug trafficking, money laundering and tax evasion.

I have made specific findings of fact in the course of this judgment – see paragraphs 54, 55, 57, 65, 66, 72, 73, 76, 78, 84, 89, 90, 93, 97, 99, 100, 103, 104, 109, 111, 115, 116, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 134 and 136 —and so at the risk of some repetition, I am in no doubt that DG and TG engaged in unlawful conduct – in DG's case, money laundering and drug trafficking, in TG's case, money laundering. There is also evidence of tax evasion in four jurisdictions.

As I have noted the ECJ has used various phrases to describe the link between the fraud and the impugned transaction. In Optigen the phrase was “a chain of supply of which those transactions form part”; in Kittel the phrase was “connected with fraud”. In Teleos and in Netto it was “participation in tax evasion”. Both Teleos and Netto are, in my judgment, a narrowing of the test.

There is no reason why the law should excuse those who make a mistake about what contemporary standards of honesty are, whether in the context of insurance claims, high finance, market manipulation or tax evasion. The law does not, in principle, excuse those whose standards are criminal by the benchmarks set by society, nor ought it to do so.

When dishonesty is in question the fact-finding tribunal must first ascertain (subjectively) the actual state of the individual's knowledge or belief as to the facts. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people.

Further in determining what it was that the taxpayer knew or ought to have known the tribunal is entitled to look at the totality of the deals effected by the taxpayer (and their characteristics), and at what the taxpayer did or omitted to do, and what it could have done, together with the surrounding circumstances in respect of all of them.