Ruth Hughes and Sam Chandler have successfully appeared for HMRC in the Upper Tribunal in the Ingenious litigation

Ruth Hughes and Sam Chandler have successfully appeared for HMRC in the well–known, high value Ingenious litigation.  The case concerns the tax treatment of investment in films and games; among them such household names as Life of Pi, Avatar, and the Golden Compass.

The Upper Tribunal (Mrs Justice Falk, Judge Herrington), whose judgment was handed down last Friday following a five-week hearing in March and April of this year, dismissed Ingenious’ appeal against two decisions of the FTT dated 2 August 2016 and 17 May 2017, and allowed HMRC’s cross-appeal.

The result of the Upper Tribunal’s 159 page decision is the disallowance of losses claimed by the appellant partnerships –  in the sum of over £1.6 billion – used by individual high net worth (and high profile) investors for the purposes of obtaining tax relief.

Ruth and Sam acted alongside Malcolm Gammie CBE QC (One Essex Court), Jonathan Davey QC (Wilberforce Chambers), and Catherine Addy QC (Maitland Chambers), Michael Jones (Grays Inn Tax Chambers), Imran Afzal (Field Court Tax Chambers), Nicholas Macklam (Radcliffe Chambers), and Oscar Schonfield (One Essex Court).

The decision can be found here.