The First Tier Tribunal (FTT) has allowed telecommunications company PTGI-ICS (PTGI) to appeal against HMRC’s decision to deny the businesses input tax recovery of £19,168,152 for the tax years for 2015-16.

HMRC denied the VAT recovery as they believed that the input tax was incurred in transactions related to the fraudulent evasion of VAT and that PTGI-ICS should have known this.

PTGI-ICS appealed against this decision on the grounds that HMRC has not proved that there was fraudulent evasion and that the company did not know that the transactions were connected to fraudulent evasion.