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Nicholas Paines QC's Library

Court of Appeal upholds Francovich liability finding in Byrne v Motor Insurers Bureau and the Secretary of State for Transport

The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision of the High Court that: (i) the UK scheme for compensating victims of untraced drivers failed properly to implement the Second EC Motor Insurance Directive; ...

High Court Damages Ruling in Hit-and-Run Case

In Byrne v Motor Insurers Bureau / Secretary of State for Transport, Flaux J has made the rare finding that the United Kingdom has committed a sufficiently serious breach of Community law to give rise to Francovich damages ...

VAT Tribunals: The European Dimension

 When I started to think about this article, I expected to be able to comment on how long it had taken for any party to an appeal to the Tribunal to rely on EC law.  I would not have been right. It is certainly true that early VAT ...

When Do Tax Measures Amount to State Aid?

The aim of this paper is to consider, by reference to a now quite considerable volume of case-law of the ECJ and the Court of First Instance (CFI), the circumstances in which provisions of tax legislation and the behaviour of tax ...

Choosing and Excluding Tenderers

The principal considerations governing the selection of a tenderer will undoubtedly be the economic advantage of the price proposed, the degree to which the objectives of the project concerned will be fulfilled and the capacity to ...

VAT and EC Law

The story starts with the House of Lords' decision in Ramsay v IRC [1981] STC 174, with its shift of emphasis from the classic approach in IRC v Duke of Westminster [1936] AC 1. In the Duke's case, a tax planning arrangement ...

Kingscrest

The High Court (Pumfrey J.) has upheld the decision of the VAT & Duties Tribunal that the supplies made by commercial residential homes were not exempt under item 4, Group 7, Schedule 9 of VATA, which exempts certain health ...