The Upper Tribunal dismissed the appeal from William Archer and upheld the First Tier Tribunal’s (FTT) overall ruling. However, the Upper Tribunal ruled that the related judicial review claims had not provided Archer with a reasonable excuse for his failure to pay the tax.

In 2016, HMRC issued closure notices of around £14m to Archer for the 2001-02 and 2002-03 tax years as Archer had used marketed tax avoidance schemes which involved relevant discounted securities (RDS) and the surrender of second-hand life assurance policies (SHIPS).

Archer did not pay the tax he owed, and he did not appeal against the closure notices as he believed that the closure notices made amendments to his self assessments and therefore no tax was due and payable.