News

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has imposed a GBP77,784 fine on a London-based law firm. It was fined for failing to comply with the client risk assessment rules for three years and failing to carry out an independent anti-money laundering (AML) compliance audit. There was no evidence of any harm to consumers or to third...

Criminals have hacked the online tax accounts of 100,000 taxpayers to claim GBP47 million of fraudulent repayments, HMRC has acknowledged. Most of the attacks were conducted by phishing using credentials obtained from non-HMRC sources to either set up new HMRC accounts or hijack existing ones, rather than by breaches of HMRC security. HMRC is writing...

The England and Wales High Court has agreed to immediate committal of a defendant after he failed to distribute to the claimant the GBP138,000 proceeds of an estate of which he was sole executor (Saleemi v Asif Parvez, 2025 EWHC 1340 Ch). The defendant had sent the estate accounts by email to the claimant’s solicitor in December...

The UK Supreme Court (UKSC) has overruled all lower courts in deciding that One Savings Bank should have realised that Catherine Waller-Edwards was acting under the undue influence of her cohabitant when she agreed a remortgage of their home. The UKSC unanimously held that a creditor is put on inquiry in any non-commercial hybrid transaction...

The First-tax Tier Tribunal (FTT) has rejected three business owners’ claims that GBP10 million they received from cancelled shares in their company was exempted from tax under the transactions in securities legislation. The FTT accepted HMRC’s contention that the legislation contained an error and the words ‘despite the fact’ meant ‘where’, not ‘even where’. This...

The England and Wales High Court (EWHC) has granted an investment bank’s request to sell the contents of 14 safe deposit boxes whose owners cannot be traced. The bank’s predecessors had held the boxes for between 44 and 122 years and had contacted the owners when closing their UK retail operations in 1994. However, some...

A woman who cared for her elderly mother for the last two and a half years of the latter’s life has successfully claimed against the estate for the value of the care she provided. The England and Wales High Court accepted that the testator had agreed to pay her daughter a ‘reasonable price’ for the...

In order for the dwelling house to be a valid residence for PPR relief, from 6 April 2015, there is a statutory condition that must be fulfilled and is assessed every tax year from 2015/16 onwards. This anti-avoidance rule was introduced as part of the NRCGT rules. Any tax year which is ‘non-qualifying’ is treated...

A common source of confusion amongst clients is the difference between mutual wills and mirror wills. Both have distinct legal implications that can significantly impact your clients wishes. Mirror Wills are two almost identical wills typically created by long-term partners or spouses, where each person leaves their estate on the same terms, usually to each...

HMRC’s annual ‘compliance yield’ from wealthy taxpayers more than doubled from GBP2.2 billion in the 2019/20 tax year to GBP5.2 billion in 2023/24, according to a report from the government’s National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO says the large increase suggests that underlying levels of non-compliance among the wealthy population could be greater than previously...