Every little helps ...

... when it comes to digging an even deeper hole.

In tax circles, as best we can recall, we have never before had litigation between a national newspaper and the taxpayer it has accused of doing nothing unlawful. We must all be rather looking forward to the case hitting the High Court; the rule of law, tax, morality, fair shares, et al.

All that is, except for the poor counsel for the Grauniad who would have to face the agony of trying to build a defence around the premise that, whilst Tesco had not broken any laws, they had failed to pay as much tax as the Grauniad decreed Tesco should be paying and, Tesco, were, therefore, bang to rights. And, as if that was not a steep enough hill to climb, there might also be the possibility that someone might just notice that the Guardian's parent company had, itself, entered into broadly similar tax planning arrangements; oops.

Tesco has commenced proceedings against the Guardian, its parent company, and its editor (but, regrettably, not Guardian readers who wear socks with their sandals). The Guardian has yet to respond to the writ but has now followed up its previous world beating, mega-expose of absolutely nothing, with the first article of what looks like a retreat which is rapidly going to gather a pace not seen since the Italians were last in a world war.

We now have an admission that, after 5 months on the case, the paper's crack team of financial journalists could not distinguish between corporation tax and stamp duty land tax (yikes). Even now, the paper still seems to be failing to grasp that stamp duty and stamp duty land tax are two different taxes.

Further, we are told that, since receiving the writ, the Guardian has ... "engaged a team of corporate tax specialists, accountants, academics and lawyers ... in an attempt to set the record straight". Which rather implies that, in seeking to paint one the country's largest, most high profile, and most aggressive, companies with the fiscal equivalent of kiddie-fiddling, no one at the paper saw fit to obtain independent and expert advice before going to press.

Lastly, we have a truly brilliant "no shit, Sherlock" moment with the revelation that the Guardian has only now established that Tesco have been involved in a game of cat and mouse with HM Revenue & Customs since 2003. So, put another way, the Guardian spent 5 months discovering what the Large Business Service of HM Revenue & Customs knew all along, and what everyone else, except the Guardian obviously, knew that HMRC would have known all along !

All told, a truly woeful tale being made even worse by the Grauniad now doing its best to trash its own ability to rely on a Reynolds defence should the case proceed. It is, after all, something of a challenge to prove your case was properly researched when, after 5 months of effort, you could not even arrive at the right tax.