But it's my money

For anyone used to the not uncommon pleas of a client wanting to collapse their approved pension fund,  Harry Thorpe v HMRC SpC 683 is worth a quick read, and if only for the novel arguments advanced.

The taxpayer was the sole remaining member of, originally, an EPP and, latterly, a SSAS. He decided, presumably with the benefit of professional advice, to purport to exercise Saunders v Vautier rights and to help himself to the scheme assets. To add to the curiosity value, the try-on does rather seem to have been shored up by reliance on a long stop argument, based on a fanciful extension of the principle in Re Hasting-Bass, that would allow for the extraction of assets from the scheme to be reversed ab intio.

Unfortunately, the judgment leaves us none of the wiser over how the case ever got as far as the Commissioners nor, once the tax charges and legal costs had been covered, whether Mr Thorpe had any pension left.