Judgment delayed in PoC tax case
Judicial review of UK Point of Consumption tax to extend into an as yet unscheduled fourth day as GBGA looks to overturn levy
The judicial review of the UK Point of Consumption (PoC) tax will extend into an as yet unallocated fourth day after both sets of counsel ran out of time to complete their arguments on what was originally scheduled to be the third and final day.
Following three days of argument and counter argument from claimant, the Gibraltar Betting and Gaming Association (GBGA), and defendant, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), both parties will now try and agree on a suitable date in the next few weeks on which to reconvene.
HMRC counsel Kieron Beal QC of Blackstone Chambers said he was willing to continue the debate via written submissions, however, the GBGA counsel Dinah Rose QC, also of Blackstone Chambers, successfully pushed for a fourth day with a preference to address Lord Justice Charles orally.
The GBGA has used the past three days to argue that the new tax regime, which came into force on 1 December, is “incompatible with requirements of EU law guaranteeing freedom to provide services”.
However, central to the case is the matter of whether European law, and more specifically article 56 of Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, is applicable to Gibraltar as an overseas territory of the United Kingdom.
The HMRC argued that, due to Gibraltar’s link to the UK, the claim represented a “purely internal situation” and that article 56 could only be applied to individual Member States, which Gibraltar is not.
The GBGA described the HMRC’s reading of the issue as “unsustainable” and referred Lord Justice Charles to a number of previous cases in which matters of trade between the UK and Gibraltar were treated as trade between Member States.
Yet previous judgments on the issue of Gibraltar’s status have gone either way and a possible scenario would be for Lord Justice Green to refer the matter to the European Court of Justice.
The judicial review began on Monday after the courts in December ruled that the GBGA’s claim raised “very significant” points and “equally important practical issues for the enforcement of revenue collection”.