Taxidermy: Getting under the skin of a tax lawyer

Gains (and losses) on disposals of assets are, broadly, computed by deducting allowable expenditure from the disposal proceeds.  Section 49(1)(c) TCGA 1992 provides that no allowance is made in the first instance for ‘any contingent liability in respect of a warranty or representation made on a disposal by way of a sale or lease of property other than land’.  However where such a contingent liability becomes enforceable and is enforced, an adjustment can be made (section 49(2)).

‘Tax havens are places where senior executives of the world’s largest financial and industrial corporations mix with figures from the artistic or social “jet-set”, together with multimillionaires who combine business with pleasure. They all rub shoulders with somewhat dubious individuals…’

Remember all that fuss in 2009 about MPs ‘flipping’ their second homes to avoid capital gains tax? (Such was the interest generated by this phenomenon that there’s even an entry about it in Wikipedia now).

I have just discovered two interesting things.

Firstly, ‘Raise Your Glass: Wine Investment and the Financial Crisis’, a study by Swiss economists Philippe Masset and Jean-Philippe Weisskopf, has shown that over the 13 years between January 1996 and January 2009 an index of first-growth Bordeaux wines outperformed the Russell 3000 Index of US shares.