Accountancy Age is reporting on Twitter that Mr Gaines Cooper has lost in the Supreme Court. The saga which has continued for a very long time now has come to an end with the Court finding that the rules as expressed in IR20 were followed correctly. The judgement was not unanimous and the dissenting judge argued that the necessity for a clean break should have been clearly expressed.

We hope that the proposed statutory residence test will leave this case as historical interest only but if there are no transitional rules in the draft legislation (expected 6 December) then Gaines Cooper may still have an impact for 2011/12 and prior years.

Lisa Spearman is a tax adviser and a partner at Mercer & Hole. The views given in this blog are personal to the author. Email Lisa Spearman

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This blog has referred before to the Gaines Cooper case, which through the rule book out of the window on residence matters when HMRC decided it was not bound by published guidance. The latest chapter in the saga has now been announced and HMRC continues its winning streak. This excellent summary sets out the detail.

We read a lot of press coverage about people apparently leaving the UK in droves, but we have to observe that that is not our experience and in fact there remain significant numbers of people coming to the UK to live. However, if you are minded to leave the UK you do actually have to go - merely cutting the time you spend here is not enough. There is a very big difference between establishing that you have left the UK rather than simply maintaining an existing state of non residence. As usual we are happy to advise further on your detailed circumstances.

Lisa Spearman is a partner at Mercer & Hole. If you would like to discuss the contents of this post with Lisa you can call her on 020 7353 1597.

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