A class act

THE SECOND ROUND for the claims in the advance corporation tax (ACT) group litigation brought by non-European parented company groups (Class 3) has ended with a partial loss for the taxpayer. Yet the outcome of the European law element of the claims still remains outstanding and the Court of Appeal's judgment delivered on 31 January 2006 (Boake Allen Ltd v HMRC; NEC Semi-Conductors Ltd and Others v CIR [2006] EWCA Civ 25; see 'Update' in this issue and the case is also on the Internet at www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2006/25.html) is not without a number of encouraging findings for taxpayers and leaves the group with a choice of possible avenues for the next stage in the litigation.

Origins

Much within the claims that are now collected within the ACT group litigation order (GLO) can be traced back to those brought by the Hoechst and Metallgesellschaft groups in 1995. The ACT...