The High Court refused an application to remit a case stated to the general commissioners for amendment to include additional findings of fact where the taxpayer company had shown no sufficient need or justification for the relief sought.

Facts

The taxpayer was the owner of land, part of which had been subject to a compulsory purchase order. The order was subsequently withdrawn and the site vacated. Over that period, the taxpayer was kept out of possession of the site which it had intended to use for clay extraction and landfill but, by the time it regained possession of the land, the local landfill market had changed and the use it was able to make of the land was more limited.

The taxpayer claimed compensation for the service and withdrawal of the order and received £2,185,000 which the taxpayer treated as capital. The Revenue disagreed, taking the view that it was income and (following an enquiry) issued a notice of amendment against which the taxpayer appealed unsuccessfully to the general commissioners. The taxpayer then requested the commissioners to state a case for the High Court. On receiving a draft, the taxpayer asked the commissioners to make amendments reflecting the additional findings of fact.

When the commissioners declined to make the amendments the taxpayer applied to the court to remit the case stated to the commissioners with a direction to make the amendments sought.

Issue

Whether the case stated should be remitted to the commissioners.

Decision

Lightman J (dismissing the application) said that it was for the commissioners to find the facts and to determine the manner in which they expressed their findings. They could not be required to identify which of the facts proved or admitted they considered to be relevant or irrelevant to their conclusion. Further, a case could not be remitted for the consideration or making of additional findings unless those findings were material to some tenable argument, reasonably open to them on the evidence adduced and not inconsistent with the findings already made. The commissioners should be protected from nit-picking and if the findings in the case stated broadly covered the territory desired to be dealt with by the additional findings, the court should be slow to send the case back, particularly if the commissioners had had the proposed findings in mind when settling the final form of the case stated (as was common ground in this case) (Consolidated Goldfields plc v IR Commrs [1990] BTC 263 and Carvill v IR Commrs [1996] BTC 72 considered).

The commissioners were not obliged to set out the evidence in detail, particularly when the evidence was documentary or to set out the evidence which they did not accept. Furthermore, when the case had been stated by general commissioners (which were not a legally qualified body) as opposed to special commissioners (who were), it was appropriate to have in mind in determining what (if any) order was appropriate, that it was a lay body and there might not have been formality in the proceedings (e.g. note taking of evidence) and that even if there was, as the general commissioners did not have to give reasons for their decision, there might have been no single view on the part of the members on any of the issues before them: it was sufficient that there was a view on the outcome. Accordingly, greater latitude had to be allowed to them and greater restraint had to be shown in granting relief of the character sought (Johnson v Scott [1978] STC 48 and Haven Healthcare (Southern) Ltd v York (HMIT) [2005] EWHC 2212 considered).

Chancery Division. Judgment delivered 30 June 2006.