R v Roger George Doncaster
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE RIX,Lord Justice Rix |
| Judgment Date | 23 January 2008 |
| Neutral Citation | [2007] EWCA Crim 2934,[2008] EWCA Crim 5 |
| Docket Number | Case No: 200701306/B4,No: 200701306/B4 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 23 January 2008 |
[2007] EWCA Crim 2934
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Rix
Mrs Justice Swift DBE
Sir Richard Curtis
No: 200701306/B4
Mr R German appeared on behalf of the Appellant
Mr T Bradbury appeared on behalf of the Crown
We will give you our decision but it is too late to give you our judgment. We will dismiss the appeal on the three grounds before us. We do not extend you permission to argue your two further grounds. We will deal with all matters in our reserved reasons.
[2008] EWCA Crim 5
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM PORTSMOUTH CROWN COURT
HIS HONOUR JUDGE PEARSON
Insert Lower Court NC Number Here
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Rix
Mrs Justice Swift Dbe and
Sir Richard Curtis
Case No: 200701306/B4
Mr R Germain & Mr L Selby (instructed by Messrs Rowe Sparks Partnership, Portsmouth, Hants) for the Appellant
Mr T Bradbury (instructed by HM Revenue & Customs) for the Respondent
Hearing dates : 02 November 2007
On 7 February 2007 at the Crown Court at Portsmouth before HH Judge Pearson and a jury the appellant, Roger George Doncaster, was convicted of cheating the public revenue (count 1) and two counts of false accounting (counts 2 and 3). He was sentenced to a total of two years imprisonment. He now appeals against conviction with the limited leave of the single judge. He also renews his application for leave to appeal against conviction in respect of two grounds on which the single judge refused leave.
Count 1 (cheating the public revenue) related to the appellant's tax affairs in the ten years between April 1992 and April 200During this time he had been making tax returns in respect of his trading as a used car dealer, but the Revenue complained that he had cheated in respect of his income tax, national insurance contributions and VAT liabilities in four ways: by failing to disclose the full extent of his turnover, thereby understating his taxable profit; by falsifying sales invoices to support the false turnover and profit figures submitted; by falsely stating his turnover as being below the limit (£50,000) for compulsory VAT registration for the purpose of evading liability to account for VAT; and by deliberately failing to register for VAT knowing that his turnover exceeded the limits for compulsory VAT registration.
Counts 2 and 3 (false accounting) related to statements of assets which he had signed during earlier tax investigations on 13 September 1992 and 13 June 2001 respectively. It was charged that he had dishonestly falsified those statements, being documents required for an accounting purpose, by omitting from them the full extent of his then assets, namely bank and building society balances totalling £37,216.71 in the case of the earlier statement and £125,210 in respect of the latter.
The full extent of the evidence deployed against him, which so far as necessary we will briefly describe below, on the Crown's case allegedly showed that for much of his life, from 1983 onwards when he was 33, the appellant had failed to account for his income tax (and later VAT) liabilities, had failed to disclose his assets, and had lied to the tax authorities. In particular he had falsely failed to disclose his full assets in September 1992 and June 2001. In July 2002 his case was referred by tax inspectors to the Revenue's Special Compliance Office (SCO) and a year later in July 2003 he was arrested. Further investigations and searches before and after his arrest revealed the extent of his trading and cash assets.
The appellant's defence at trial was that, although he had done much of which complaint was made over the years in terms of failing to render tax returns or make full disclosure of his assets, and had done so consciously, and had lied in support of his non-disclosures: nevertheless he had done so honestly, always intending to pay any tax due, and that he had made full and proper disclosure of his motor trading and its profits; that his non-disclosed assets and his life-style had been respectively accumulated and supported by income from property dealings or gifts from his father; and that any non-disclosure of his full assets had been in the honest belief that, if he had made such disclosure, the Revenue would have wrongly but maliciously insisted that he justify those further assets as not having been derived from his motor trading.
The appellant had traded as a second hand car dealer in Croydon from 1978 to 1986 and thereafter on the Isle of Wight from 1987.
There had been in all three separate tax enquiries, in 1983, 1990 and 2000. The first enquiry was started in 1983 by the Croydon tax office for failure to notify the Revenue of chargeability for income tax in relation to the years 1978/79 through to 1982/83. In other words the Revenue was concerned that he had been trading and in receipt of income but had not notified the Revenue that he was doing so and had not filed any tax returns. At the conclusion of that investigation the appellant completed a statement of assets and (save that he disputed that it had ever been signed) a certificate of full disclosure. His tax and national insurance liabilities for the relevant years were assessed at £6,617.93 plus interest, of which the appellant paid only £2,100 on account.
In 1987 the appellant moved to the Isle of Wight and again failed to notify the Revenue of his chargeability to income tax in respect of his motor trading. As a result the second enquiry was started in 1990. This enquiry went back to cover the whole period from 1978 through to 1989, because of the appellant's failure to discharge the whole of his assessed liabilities arising out of the first enquiry. On 13 September 1992 the appellant signed a second statement of assets as at 30 June 1992 (that is the statement which is the subject matter of count 2) and a second certificate of full disclosure. The second statement of assets referred to very modest cash credits in a small number of accounts, of which the only building society account was held at the Woolwich. On the basis of this second statement of assets, as the Revenue alleged, they were willing to proceed with a proposed settlement of tax liabilities up to 5 April 1989 in the sum of £45,000. That included an interest and penalty loading of 60%.
The second enquiry was conducted in the main by a local tax inspector by the name of Barry Davies. In the course of the second enquiry it emerged that:
(i) At an interview on 17 July 1990 the appellant had been told by Mr Davies that he was concerned at the way the previous enquiry at Croydon had gone: he had promised co-operation but had not kept his side of the bargain and had moved to the Isle of Wight without informing the Revenue; full co-operation and disclosure would be expected and a further statement of assets would be required; the Revenue took a serious view of forms subsequently found to be false.
(ii) At a further interview on 26 July 1990, the appellant disclosed, but only after being seen to visit a local branch of the Abbey National building society, that he had been there to close an account and withdraw £10,000; and then also disclosed the recent closure of three other building society accounts and withdrawals totalling approximately £20,500. He said he had now disclosed all such accounts. The appellant paid the Revenue £25,000 on account.
(iii) In a telephone conversation of 4 March 1991 the appellant revealed that over a decade before he had sold a property in Thornton Heath. In a further telephone conversation on 26 April 1991 the appellant's accountant, Mr Hutchinson, told Mr Davies that that sale occurred in 1980 in the sum of £21,000. Mr Davies said that this had not figured in the first certificate of full disclosure, and he again spoke of the serious view that the Revenue took of false statements of assets and certificates of disclosure.
(iv) As a result of this latest disclosure Mr Davies referred the enquiry to the Enquiry Branch (as the SCO was then called) for possible transfer to it of further investigations as a case of serious fraud (which under standing order Guidance was the exclusive responsibility of the Enquiry Branch), but the Enquiry Branch declined transfer. When the appellant and Mr Davies next met on 28 January 1992, Mr Davies spoke to the appellant again of how he had promised co-operation but had told lies and was regarded as still being un-co-operative in not disclosing where he was holding the balance of the funds which he had withdrawn from closed building society accounts in the previous summer.
Following the conclusion of the second enquiry the appellant started filing annual tax returns for the first time.
The third enquiry commenced in August 2000 when the appellant's 1998/99 self assessment form was selected for further enquiry. It had calculated his turnover at £48,784 and his net profit at £5,201. The turnover figure was only just below the limit of £50,000 at which registration for VAT was compulsory, and this, together with a profit figure considered as too low to live on, alerted the Revenue. The third enquiry was conducted by other local tax inspectors, by the...
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