Nielson v Revenue and Customs () [2026] UKUT 193 (TCC) (18 May 2026)

Executive summary

The Upper Tribunal considered Michael Nielson’s renewed application for permission to appeal against an FTT decision concerning whether he had successfully amended his 2007/2008 self-assessment return. Judge Vimal Tilakapala refused permission, holding that no arguable error of law had been identified in the FTT’s treatment of the corrective action form, the closure notice, or the tribunal’s case-management and evidential conclusions.

Key points

• Parties: Michael Nielson v The Commissioners for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
• Context: the dispute arose in connection with a tax avoidance scheme, an Accelerated Payment Notice, and a Follower Notice under Part 4 of the Finance Act 2014.
• Holding: permission to appeal was refused because the applicant did not show an arguable error of law in the FTT decision.
• Reasoning: the corrective action form could only be used to make amendments necessary to counter the tax advantage from the scheme, and Mr Nielson’s attempted re-categorisation of £1,000,000 as a gift was outside that scope.
• Reasoning: the FTT’s conclusion that the closure notice contained no appealable decision, and its decision to allow HMRC’s submissions despite alleged lateness, were not shown to be plainly wrong or unjustifiable.
• Substantive tax finding: the FTT had also concluded, in the alternative, that the £1,000,000 payment was taxable income rather than a gift.

Why it matters

The decision reinforces HMRC’s control over the narrow use of corrective action in follower-notice cases and limits attempts to repurpose that procedure for broader substantive amendments. For sanctions or national-security audiences, it is mainly relevant as a litigation-enforcement signal: procedural pathways created to counter tax-avoidance schemes will be construed tightly, reducing room for asset or income re-characterisation strategies.

Implications

For compliance and disputes strategy, the case shows that taxpayers cannot use Finance Act 2014 corrective-action machinery to make unrelated amendments to out-of-time returns. It also signals that Upper Tribunal permission will be hard to obtain where the complaint is really about evidential weight, factual findings, or case management rather than a genuine point of law.