Law digests: 29 May 2020

Income tax

Fowler v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2020] UKSC 22, [2020] All ER (D) 124 (May)

The Court of Appeal, Civil Division, had decided that in the deemed world introduced by s 15(2) of the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005, the taxpayer diver had been carrying on a business, and thus ‘an enterprise of a Contracting State’, within the meaning of Art 7(1) of the UK–South Africa Double Taxation Convention (the Treaty), which was not displaced by Art 14 of that Treaty. In allowing the Revenue and Customs Commissioners’ appeal against that decision, the Supreme Court held that nothing in s 15 of the 2005 Act purported to alter the settled meaning of the relevant terms of the Treaty, viewed from the perspective of UK tax law, with the result that, s 15 of that Act, understood in the light of s 6(5) of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, charged income tax on the employment income of an employed diver, but