Rangers v Advocate General for Scotland [2017] WTLR 1093

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | Autumn 2017 #169

The appeal concerned a tax avoidance scheme by which employers paid remuneration to their employees through an employees’ remuneration trust in the hope that the scheme would avoid liability to income tax and Class 1 national insurance contributions. The question on appeal was whether an employee’s remuneration was taxable as their emoluments or earnings when it was paid to a third party in circumstances in which the employee had no prior entitlement to receive it himself or herself.

The employing companies, including RFC, operated the tax avoidance scheme in the tax years between...

University of London v Prag & anr [2014] EWHC 3564 (Ch)

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | May 2015 #149

This decision concerned the construction of a trust deed dated 28 November 1944 (the deed) made between Eric Max Warburg on behalf of the Warburg family, Viscount Lee of Fareham on behalf of the Warburg Society, and the University of London (UOL). There arose questions about the scope of the deed, the ownership of property, the status of funding and the propriety of the administration by UOL under the deed. UOL brought a construction summons to determine these questions at the behest of HM Attorney General (the second defendant). The first defendant was Professor John Prag, of the Univer...

Trustees: Self-dealing – rigours and risks

Brudenell-Bruce offers salutary lessons about the self-dealing rule, as Simon Atkinson explains ‘Brudenell-Bruce provides a restatement of the law relating to estoppel by deed and applies principles of construction to deeds and consent orders.’ For chancery practitioners Brudenell-Bruce (Earl of Cardigan) v Moore and Cotton [2012] provides valuable guidance in a number of areas. The …
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Futter & anr v HMRC; Pitt & anr v HMRC [2013] WTLR 977

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | July/August 2013 #131

The first appeal concerned two settlements, made with non-resident trustees, by Mr Futter. Considerable ‘stockpiled’ gains were rolled up while the trusts were non-resident and, in exercise of the powers conferred by the trusts, new resident trustees were appointed and capital was distributed to Mr Futter and his children in the mistaken belief that the ‘stockpiled’ gains, which would be attributed to them, would be absorbed by allowable losses that had been realised, so that no liability to capital gains tax would arise. In advising as to the effect of s87 of the Taxation a...

Cardigan v Moore & anr [2012] EWHC 1024 (Ch)

Wills & Trusts Law Reports | July/August 2012 #121

At the end of the 1940s, the Savernake Estate, which was the subject of these proceedings, was held by a company owned by the 7th and 8th Marquesses of Ailesbury. Between 1949 and 1951 the company was replaced by a partnership. There was a conveyance executed in 1951 by which the estate was conveyed to the Marquesses on trust for sale as part of their partnership. The partnership property also included the family collection of paintings and other chattels. By 1963, there was an agreement that the partnership would be carried on by the 8th Marquess, who had a 51% share, and the trustees f...