Taking Stock: Taxing times for Clapham Omnibus
Where has the man from the Clapham Omnibus got off? TS muses...
HMRC v Forde and McHugh is likely to be a tax spat that has avoided your radar of interest.
It’s still a big deal, as the Supreme Court judges ruled that employer’s pension contributions should not be considered earnings for tax purposes, therefore not liable for NICs.
But as TS struggled to keep its eyes open through the (admittedly short) ten page ruling, the peepers happened upon something truly ground-breaking.
Slipped in on the bottom of page six, was a reference to what the “ordinary man on the underground” would think about HMRC’s insistence for treating the employer’s payment and subsequent benefit to the employee as a double earning.
The ‘ordinary man on the underground’? Heh? What happened to the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’?
Well, he obviously used his Transport for London App, and timed his bus journey to coincide with that of a train (from Clapham Junction), before catching a tube from Clapham North. Of course, knowing what the trains are like, he might well be still on the platform.
Image copyright: wirewiping; Flickr