No immunity from tax for vaccine avoidance scheme

A tax avoidance scheme which abused the reliefs offered for research into life-saving vaccines in order to claim back £77m in tax has been rejected again by a tribunal.

Investors in the scheme used a Jersey-registered limited partnership which claimed to be involved in creating and exploiting intellectual property from research into vaccines against diseases such as HIV, flu, Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B. The Vaccine Research Limited Partnership scheme, promoted by Matrix Structured Finance, sought to exploit a tax relief for spending on research and development (R&D) by claiming back all the tax due on an alleged investment of £114m and a first year trading loss of £193m. However, the Upper Tribunal has now backed an earlier First-tier Tribunal rulin...