Description
The duty of an accountant to give general tax advice did not include a duty to give advice to the claimant that he was or might be a non-domiciled person and that that status carried with it potentially significant tax advantages. The firm did not specialise in non-domicile tax planning, had not been asked to give consideration to whether capital gains tax could be avoided on the sale of shares by reference to the claimant having been born and lived initially overseas, and it was not alleged that they should have known of the existence of a bearer warrant scheme for tax planning purposes for a non-domiciled individual. While an accountant who is retained by a client to deal with his personal affairs will inevitably have to point out what might be the hidden tax consequences of any particular proposal and in handling tax affairs to advise on any available tax reliefs, that does not extend to sophisticated tax planning involving re-formulation of transactions to bring about particular tax consequences.
