R (on the application of Capital Accommodation (London) Ltd (in Liquidation)) v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2012] UKUT 276 (TCC), [2012] All ER (D) 68 (Aug)
Regulation 35 of the Value Added Tax Regulations 1995 (SI 1995/2518), conferred a discretion on the Revenue to impose requirements as to the time in which a taxable person should correct an error. The Revenue might, in the exercise of that discretion, lay down requirements in advance as to the time within which a taxable person might bring forward a proposed correction. The discretion was not limited to issuing requirements once a taxable person had come forward to identify an error or after the Revenue had identified an error. By issuing the guidance, and previous versions of it, with its requirements as to the time within which applications to correct errors should be made, the Revenue had exercised its discretion in line with those powers. The time limits imposed by the guidance were in line with the time limits in other relevant and connected provisions in the regime set out in the governing legislation, and had the effect that corrections