May 2012 #136 – Law Journals

Musings From Manchester: Time and the taxman

Geoffrey Shindler finds the trials of an over-complex tax system a worldwide phenomenon ‘The IRS do not seem to have one tax return to be completed each year, even if that tax return has various constituent parts. They have a series of different tax returns for different purposes.’ In March of this year I attended …

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Trusts And The Family Home: No clarity for cohabitants

Lyndsey West and James Lister revisit cohabitants’ property interests on separation in the Supreme Court decision in Jones v Kernott ‘While the decision as to the result in Jones was unanimous, the conclusion was reached in different ways. The principle source of disagreement revolved around the question of whether it was open to the court …

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Europe: Double trouble

Richard Frimston and Beth Norton clarify the position on double taxation following the EU’s recent communication ‘The approach adopted by the Commission is that it is possible to resolve cross-border tax problems through co-ordination of existing national legislation, rather than there being a requirement for new European legislation to be produced.’ Clients with cross-border issues …

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Intestacy And Family Provision: Welcome modernisation

In the first of two articles, Catherine Paget outlines the result of the Law Commission’s consultation on intestacy and family provision claims on death, focusing on intestacy ‘For the most recent five-year period for which figures are available, there were more than 300,000 applications for a grant of representation to administer an intestate estate.” The …

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Tax Tribunal: The human face of tax

The conduct of Hamar at tribunal reveals valuable points of practice, as John Barnett explains ‘Arguing human rights in tax cases is notoriously difficult and we still await a significant case that shows where the boundaries of the state’s right to levy taxes lies.’ Like many tax advisers, I have taken cases to tribunal only …

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IHT: Write it down

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Peter Nellist outlines ten steps to securing the IHT income exemption ‘A major objective should be to unite and illustrate the settled pattern of the past and propose a pattern as regular as possible for what is to be the future use of the exemption.’ It can be difficult to obtain acceptance by HMRC that …

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Offshore: Share and share alike

John Rimmer summarises Harper v Simpson, which sheds light on whether the Duomatic principle applies to beneficial shareholders ‘The court preferred the more modern view that orthodox thinking was now that the Duomatic principle does not apply to actions of a beneficial shareholder, but only to a legal (registered) shareholder.’ Every law student learns that …

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Wills: It’s good to talk

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The consequences of omitting key questions when taking will instructions are clear in Robinson, as Martyn Frost reports ‘Did the client compartmentalise her thinking and consider the Canadian and Spanish wills to be completely unrelated matters each being unaffected by the other?’ The recent Canadian case Robinson Estate v Robinson [2011] deals with a problem …

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Offshore: Share and share alike

John Rimmer summarises Harper v Simpson, which sheds light on whether the Duomatic principle applies to beneficial shareholders Every law student learns that a company is a separate legal person from its members and that the management of the company is carried on by the directors. Yet the voting members of a company can make …

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