As HMRC ramps up its use of the Connect data analytics tool to search social media for potential earnings anomalies, the tax courts may be one step ahead if the outcome of a non-dom residency case when it probed the reasons for a party held in the early 1960s when determining tax residency, says Andrew Hubbard, consultant, RSM
In November 1961 Ian Henderson held a party in London before his departure to Brazil to work for the South American arm of his family’s international business. He can scarcely have imagined that more than 55 years later that party, and the reason for it being held, would feature in a court case about his grandchildren’s tax status.
To explain why, we need to delve into the strange work of domicile and the place that it has in the tax system. Non-doms have attracted much public attention in recent years – most of it adverse – because of a perception that they are somehow ‘getting away’ without paying their fair share of tax.
It seems to be taken for granted by those who express such views that it is easy to point to somebody and say that he/she is a non-dom – almost as if they wore a special uniform. In fact, as the Henderson family found, identifying who is and is not domiciled in the UK can be remarkably complex. Why is this?
