Red 12 Trading Ltd v HM Revenue and Customs
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE CHRISTOPHER CLARKE,Mr Justice Christopher Clarke |
| Judgment Date | 20 October 2009 |
| Neutral Citation | [2009] EWHC 2563 (Ch) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CH/2009/APP/0102 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Date | 20 October 2009 |
[2009] EWHC 2563 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
CHANCERY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Mr Justice Christopher Clarke
Case No: CH/2009/APP/0102
MR F RANDOLPH QC (instructed by Mackrell Turner Garrett) for the Appellant
MISS H MALCOLM QC, MISS S LAMBERT and MISS R MARCUS (instructed by HMRC Solicitors' Office) for the Respondent
Hearing dates: 18 th, 19 th and 22 nd June
Approved Judgment
Mr Justice Christopher Clarke:
This is an appeal from a decision of the VAT & Duties Tribunal, sitting in London, released on 16 th December 2008. By that decision the tribunal dismissed, save in one respect, the appeal under section 83 (c) and/or (e) of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 of the appellant, Red 12 Trading Ltd (“Red 12”), against the denial by the respondents, the Commissioners for Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (“HMRC”) of Red 12's ability to deduct input tax in respect of 46 transactions in the tax periods 02/06 and 03/06. The input tax in issue was £ 2,672,748.50.
This case concerns what is called “Missing Trader Intracommunity Fraud” (“MTIC fraud”). Anyone reading this judgment is likely to be familiar with this expression, which has been explained in several tribunal and High Court decisions. The classic way in which the fraud works is as follows. Trader A imports goods, commonly computer chips and mobile telephones, into the United Kingdom from the European Union (“EU”). Such an importation does not require the importer to pay any VAT on the goods. A then sells the goods to B, charging VAT on the transaction. B pays the VAT to A, for which A is bound to account to HMRC. There are then a series of sales from B to C to D to E (or more). These sales are accounted for in the ordinary way. Thus C will pay B an amount which includes VAT. B will account to HMRC for the VAT it has received from C, but will claim to deduct (as an input tax) the output tax that A has charged to B. The same will happen, mutatis mutandis, as between C and D. The company at the end of the chain – E – will then export the goods to a purchaser in the EU. Exports are zero-rated for tax purposes, so Trader E will receive no VAT. He will have paid input tax but because the goods have been exported he is entitled to claim it back from HMRC. The chains in question may be quite long. The deals giving rise to them may be effected within a single day. Often none of the traders themselves take delivery of the goods which are held by freight forwarders.
The way that the fraud works is that A, the importer, goes missing. It does not account to HMRC for the tax paid to it by B. When HMRC tries to obtain the tax from A it can neither find A nor any of A's documents. In an alternative version of the fraud (which can take several forms) the fraudster uses the VAT registration details of a genuine and innocent trader, who never sees the tax on the sale to B, with which the fraudster makes off. The effect of A not accounting for the tax to HMRC means that HMRC does not receive the tax that it should. The effect of the exportation at the end of the chain is that HMRC pays out a sum, which represents the total sum of the VAT payable down the chain, without having received the major part of the overall VAT due, namely the amount due on the first intra-UK transaction between A and B. This amount is a profit to the fraudsters and a loss to the Revenue.
The tribunal held that all of the 46 deals save one were part of an MTIC fraud. One deal – deal 32 – was tainted by fraud. In respect of 45 of the deals the subject of the fraud the tribunal dismissed Red 12's appeal. In respect of deal 32 the tribunal allowed the appeal because the case was pleaded on the basis of the fraud being an MTIC fraud, adding that, given its finding that deal 32 was tainted by fraud, albeit not MTIC fraud, whether the Commissioners chose to repay the input tax was a matter for them.
A jargon has developed to describe the participants in the fraud. The importer is known as “the defaulter”. The intermediate traders between the defaulter and the exporter are known as “buffers” because they serve to hide the link between the importer and the exporter, and are often numbered “buffer 1, buffer 2” etc. The company which export the goods is known as the “broker”.
The manner in which the proceeds of the fraud are shared (if they are) is known only by those who are parties to it. It may be that A takes all the profit or shares it with one or more of those in the chain, typically the broker. Alternatively the others in the chain may only earn a modest profit from a mark up on the intervening transactions. The fact that there are a series of sales in a chain does not necessarily mean that everyone in the chain is party to the fraud. Some of the members of the chain may be innocent traders.
There are variants of the plain vanilla version of the fraud. In one version (“carousel fraud”) the goods that have been exported by the broker are subsequently re-imported, either by the original importer, or a different one, and continue down the same or another chain. Another variant is called “contra trading”, the details of which are explained in paragraphs 9 and 10 of the judgment of Burton J in R (on the application of Just Fabulous (UK) Ltd) v HMRC [2008] STC 2123. Goods are sold in a chain (“the dirty chain”) through one or more buffer companies to (in the end) the broker (“Broker 1”) which exports them, thus generating a claim for repayment. Broker 1 then acquires (actually or purportedly) goods, not necessarily of the same type, but of equivalent value from an EU trader and sells them, usually through one or more buffer companies, to Broker 2 in the UK for a mark up. The effect is that Broker 1 has no claim for repayment of input VAT on the sale to it under the dirty chain, because any such claim is matched by the VAT accountable to HMRC in respect of the sale to UK Broker 2. On the contrary a small sum may be due to HMRC from Broker 1. The suspicions of HMRC are, by this means, hopefully not aroused. Broker 2 then exports the goods and claims back the total VAT. The overall effect is the same as in the classic version of the fraud; but the exercise has the effect that the party claiming the repayment is not Broker 1 but Broker 2, who is, apparently, part of a chain without a missing trader (“the clean chain”). Broker 2 is party to the fraud.
HMRC will have records of whatever returns have been made to them by companies registered for VAT and will know what has been accounted to them and what has not. Using those records and information provided by VAT registered companies they are able to trace a chain of transactions in respect of which output tax received has been accounted for and claims to deduct imput tax have been made. They can, thus, trace back from exporter E to (say) importer A. But at some stage the trail is likely to go cold. In the classic version of the fraud it will do so when HMRC gets to A because A and its documents have disappeared. HMRC will know that A has defaulted on its obligations in respect of VAT since it will not have received any of the output tax paid by B to A (as accounted for by B).
However, HMRC may not be in a position to know whether A is in fact the importer or whether there may have been earlier companies in the chain, either as purchasers or transferees, such that its full length was (say) Y – Z – A – B etc. In that example there will have been a defaulter (A), who will not have accounted to HMRC for VAT, but there will also have been an importer (Y). Whether or not Y or Z are liable to account for VAT may depend on the exact nature of the dealings between Y, Z and A, between whom money may not have changed hands.
In a chain of transactions between traders all of whom are honest each trader will account to HMRC for the output tax received (in respect of which the trader acts, broadly speaking, as agent for HMRC: Elida Gibbs Ltd v Customs & Excise Comrs [1997] QB 499), less any input tax incurred, which he will claim from HMRC. He will, ordinarily, need most of the money received from his sales to pay his supplier and the VAT due. The full extent of any chain will be patent. Where there is dishonesty the position is different. It is in the interests of those who seek to defraud HMRC of VAT to hide the full extent of any chain by the use of buffer companies. Such persons lack any interest in seeing that they, or the companies through whom they operate, are able to account to HMRC for all the VAT that they should.
The tribunal noted that, in some of the chains in the present case, instructions had been given for the price (or most of it) to be paid to some third party in a Member State other than the UK. The tribunal accepted that this was evidence of two things:
(a) that the goods had been imported from the EU; and
(b) fraud, since it ensured that the defaulting trader was left with no funds from which HMRC could seek payment of the VAT liability..
Law
Articles 167 and 168 of Council Directive 2006/12/EC of 28 November 2006 on the Common System of Value Added Tax (the “2006 Directive”), which is the successor to two earlier Directives on the harmonisation of the laws of Member States relating to turnover taxes, provide:
“167 - A right of deduction shall arise at the time the deductible tax becomes charged.
168 Insofar as the goods and services are used for the purposes of the taxed transactions of a taxable person, the taxable person shall be entitled, in the Member...
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