There has been much attention paid recently in the media to the stance that HMRC is taking, in light of public disquiet on the issue, to closing tax avoidance loopholes and increasing its revenues. HMRC’s new aggressive approach is having some interesting effects.

Companies are allocating larger and larger reserves of cash to settle disputes with the Treasury and thereby avoid embarrassing headlines. There is also evidence that companies are less likely to follow through on a good old-fashioned technical argument with the Revenue, even where there is no suggestion of any actual wrong doing. Company executives fear that a negative result will be seized upon by the press and that they will simply be lumped together with high profile tax dodger and cheats.

High profile individuals are also increasingly taking the route of early settlement with HMRC to minimise the risk of damaging headlines. Interestingly however, there is evidence that less prominent wealthy individuals are becoming more combative and are more likely to fight the demands of HMRC through the courts. These individuals are also showing an appetite, when they lose a case, to sue their financial advisors on the basis that they would not have invested in the scheme of they had been fully aware of the risks.

The world is changing and the UK is becoming more like the US; whose revenue services have always played hardball.

Children will be given a greater voice in the family justice system so that they can tell judges how they feel and what they think about the family disputes in which they are involved.

Children and young people must by law have their views heard before decisions are made about their future and where decisions are made that will impact them. At the moment, it is still too often the case that their views are not fully heard. The government has therefore made the commitment that from the age of 10, children and young people involved in all family court hearings in England and Wales will have access to judges to make their views and feelings known.

The announcement was made by the Ministry of Justice following calls from young peoples’ representative group, the Family Justice Young People’s Board, that for too long children have been pushed and pulled through the family justice system with little or no say on what happens to them.

The government will also work with mediator sector so that children have appropriate access to mediators in cases which affect them.

These changes to procedure will be put into place as soon as practically possible.

The Supreme Court recently ruled that a term in a commercial lease requiring a tenant to carry out such repairs as were necessary to keep the premises in a tenantable condition did not require a notice from the landlord to activate it. It followed that on the expiry of the lease the landlord could claim the cost of necessary repairs.

In the case in question, the landlord had agreed with the tenant that alterations to the building by the tenant would be allowed subject to the provision that at the end of the lease the tenant was to restore the premises to their original state “if so required” by the landlord before the tenancy ended. Shortly before the expiry of the lease in question the landlord’s agent had telephoned the tenant and told her that the landlord wished the tenant to remove alterations it had made to the premises so as to restore them to their original condition. A surveyor had then prepared a schedule of dilapidations but the report was only received by the tenant after the tenancy had ended. The tenant refused to carry out the work, referencing the clause in the tenancy agreement indicating that all notices had to be received in writing and that the obligation only arose where a tenant had been asked to remedy such defects during the currency of the tenancy.

The Court ruled that the lease imposed a continuing obligation on the tenant which did not require any notice from the landlord to activate it.