This week’s opinion

I have had several follow-up conversations after my editorial ‘A sad case’ (17 May) about the milkman faced with an excessive tax bill and fairness was also one of the subjects discussed at the chartered tax advisers address on 22 May.

We have all seen cases of unfairness in the tax system. Sometimes this comes from the rules themselves but more often it is because people are caught up in a process that they cannot control. Everybody I speak to thinks that there ought to be some mechanism – Heather Self suggested a reverse general anti-abuse rule – which would allow an override on the statutory position. How and when it should apply is a more difficult question to answer. We all want HMRC to be able to use discretion – but only if it is favourable to a particular client. And what do we mean by fair?