THE TAX AVOIDANCE ROLLERCOASTER: YET ANOTHER NEW APPROACH

OVER the last 20 years judicial attitudes to tax avoidance schemes have varied dramatically, especially in the House of Lords. The judicial power to ignore tax avoidance schemes was first recognised in Ramsay [1982] A.C. 300 and reached its high-point of principled analysis in Furniss v. Dawson [1984] A.C. 474. There followed a period of a generally restrictive interpretation of the law, but recently there have been signs of a more interventionist approach, in McGuckian [1997] 1 W.L.R. 991 especially. But with the most recent decision in Macniven v. Westmoreland Investments Ltd. [2001] 2 W.L.R. 377 it is clear that the House of Lords has again sought to curtail its power to deal with tax avoidance schemes.