This week's opinion

The publication of the draft guidance on penalties for enablers of defeated tax avoidance reminds us of how much the tax avoidance landscape has changed. I was at the Latimer House conference in 2005 when Dave Hartnett former HMRC general secretary for tax announced the department’s new approach to tackling aggressive tax avoidance – dubbed by some the ‘litigate or die’ strategy. It perhaps took longer than he had hoped (my memory was that he wanted to stamp out avoidance by 2010) but there is no doubt that speech started a process that has led to most people in the tax community viewing packaged arrangements as something toxic to be avoided at all costs. Now as well as all the other anti-avoidance measures we have new rules that allow HMRC to charge a penalty on the promoter of a failed abusive arrangement equal to the fees...