Andrew Parish v The Commissioners for HMRC

Facts

The appellant was a director of Minstrell Recruitment Limited (MRL), a construction recruitment agency, and of two associated companies, North and South. On 19 January 2024 the tribunal upheld HMRC's decisions denying MRL credit for input tax for the periods 05/17 to 02/19 on a Kittel basis, and upheld HMRC's refusal to register North and South for VAT. It found that MRL knew or should have known that its transactions were connected with fraudulent evasion of VAT, and that the appellant controlled the fraudulently defaulting supplier companies. HMRC then assessed MRL to a penalty of £2,889,346.95 under schedule 24 to the Finance Act 2007 for deliberate inaccuracies. On 20 December 2024 they issued the appellant with a personal liability notice for the whole sum under paragraph 19 of schedule 24 to the Finance Act 2007. That decision was upheld on review and the appellant appealed. His grounds included that since 16 November 2017 Kittel-type penalties could be imposed only under sections 69C and 69D of the Value Added Tax Act 1994, which were now out of time. He also argued that the VAT returns contained no inaccuracy and that the penalty was excessive and wrongly attributed wholly to him. HMRC applied under rule 8 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Tax Chamber) Rules 2009 to strike out part of the appeal as having no reasonable prospect of success or as an abuse of process.