HMRC have issued a statement providing guidance on how the UK will be implementing the European Commission’s decision on State Aid. HMRC has not published its statement but will be sending it to all companies to which it is relevant.

The key points covered in the statement include guidance on the identification of UK significant people function, details of the mechanisms HMRC proposes to use to recover the aid, calculation of the recoverable amount, the availability of reliefs and time limits and administrative guidance on interest, appeals and postponement notices.

In a related development, BP International’s (BP) annulment action against the Commission’s state aid decision in this area was published in the Official Journal of the European Union last month. The action was brought by BP in September 2019. BP are seeking to argue that the Commission has defined the system too narrowly, by looking solely at the CFC rules in Part 9A of TIOPA 2010 rather than the UK corporate tax system as a whole.