Since it's now clear that the meeting I attended at which HMRC director Judith Knott spoke yesterday was not covered by the Chatham House Rule and as a result I am free to report what she said, let's turn to the matter of retrospective legislation.<\/p>\n
She defended the use of retrospective legislation against Barclays. The reasons were:<\/p>\n
a) The amount involved<\/p>\n
b) A warning had been given<\/p>\n
c) It breached the banking code<\/p>\n
And she said HMRC would be willing to do it again. But she drew the line at what India has just done to over-turn the Vodafone decision to claim about $2.7 billion dollars of tax which they had legislation saying was due - but which a judge did his level best to over-rule using English law as a precedent. That she said was unreasonable.<\/p>\n
Ah, so now we no: one rule for us, another for India. Wasn't it ever thus?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"