The bookmaker has been stopped from reclaiming the corporation tax by a tribunal, which agreed with HM Revenue and Customs' assertion that the avoidance scheme used was barred by law.
The 2008 scheme saw two companies in the Ladbroke group (Ladbroke International and Travel Document Service) enter into specially-designed arrangements so that an artificially manufactured fall in the value of the shares in one company created a loss in the other for tax purposes.
The group suffered no real economic loss overall.
Avoidance just doesn’t pay – we win around 80% of cases taxpayers choose to litigate and many more concede before litigationJim Harra
