Ben Symons

"Ben Symons is clearly very knowledgeable."

Ben is an experienced barrister with extensive experience in all areas of UK taxation law. Ben is a member of the Attorney General’s London C Panel.

Ben advises on and undertakes litigation in relation to a diverse range of taxation matters, including:

• VAT matters and VAT tax appeals including penalty appeals;
• Tax Disputes;
• Non-domiciled individuals/Deemed domicile individuals;
• Foreign Income and Gains tax regime issues;
• Stamp Duty Land Tax Planning;
• Inheritance Tax Planning / Deceased estates and Taxation;
• Capital Gains Tax Planning including the Substantial Shareholder Exemption, Business Asset Disposal Relief, Business Assets Rollover Relief, EIS Relief and Private Residence Relief;
• Local Authority Tax Planning;
• International Tax, including interpretation of double tax treaties and foreign tax credit relief;
• Residence and Domicile planning;
• The Taxation of UK Trusts including Interest in Possession Trusts, Discretionary Trusts, Accumulation Trusts;
• The Taxation of and Offshore Trusts;
• Tax Avoidance – Transfers of Assets Abroad;
• Tax issues in relation to Deceased Estates;
• Employee Benefits Trusts and Employee Ownership Trusts;
• Employment Taxation including IR-35, NICs and disguised remuneration;
• R & D Tax Credit Relief;
• R & D Tax Credit Investigations;
• Valuation issues – particularly in relation to companies;
• Cross-border taxation issues for both companies and individuals;
• UK-Australia tax matters;
• UK-US tax matters;
• M & A Tax matters including advice on restructures and drafting of tax covenants;
• Judicial review in relation to tax disputes.

Ben has also written a book on cryptocurrency and taxation entitled Tax Insight: Cryptocurrency and Blockchain published through Bloomsbury Professional and has a tremendous knowledge of all things related to both cryptocurrency and taxation. Ben is ranked in Chambers & Partners as a Band 2 Cryptocurrency junior.

Ben also undertakes commercial litigation including:

• Commercial disputes that have tax related issues (for instance, acting for claims being made by a liquidator against certain parties who had entered into tax avoidance schemes);
• Matters related to freezing orders and other tax injunctions;
• Commercial disputes;
• Trust law;
• Contractual disputes;
• Insolvency matters;
• Property matters;
• Probate matters.

Selected tax advisory matters

Private Client Taxation

Complex advice for a high net worth individual who had been resident in the US, had become a UK resident, and had substantial business interests in US trusts. The individual owned a business worth around £100 million. Tax advice included:

• the tax implications of making loans from the US trusts, in particular, the application of the transfer of assets abroad provisions and the availability of the motive defence;

• demonstrating that the client could use the FIG regime to shield foreign income and foreign gains arising in the US trusts – determining which income and gains were foreign and would therefore qualify for exemption;

• whether his second wife, who did not qualify for the FIG regime, could obtain foreign tax credit relief in the UK on distributions made to her that had been subject to UK tax (consideration of whether his wife could avail herself of the Supreme Court’s decision of Anson v HMRC [2015] UKSC 44);

• advice on restructuring the US trusts to try and overcome any ambiguity as to the application of the Supreme Court’s decision of Anson v HMRC [2015] UKSC 44 and the ability of the beneficiaries to claim foreign tax credits in the UK.

Complex advice for a non-domiciled individual receiving a $50 million from an offshore trust – tax advice for a high net worth individual receiving a distribution of $50 million from an offshore trust, including:

• extensive research and advice to ensure that the offshore trust was not tainted either by the provision of property or services (the client had acted as a director for one of the companies in the trust – this created a potential issue);

• extensive research and advice in relation to how the client could ensure they were non-UK resident;

• advising the client on two different tax-effective options :

1. becoming UK resident – pay the distribution in under the Temporary Repatriation facility;

b. remaining non-UK resident.

Non-Domiciled Individual advice – working with an accountant to handle a dispute in relation to a non-domiciled individual, including:

• research and consideration of whether the taxpayer was non-domiciled for UK tax purposes;

• research and consideration of whether certain foreign income that the individual had earned overseas that had been used to purchase cryptocurrency, constituted a remission to the UK;

• research and consideration more generally of whether foreign income and gains had been remitted to the UK;

• determination of a defensible position in relation to the above issues.

Advice on a double trust home loan scheme – tax advice in relation to whether a double trust home loan scheme that my client’s father had been put into was defensible for tax purposes. In particular, consideration of whether the agreement for the sale of the property and the deferral of payment agreement satisfied section 2(1) of the Law of Property 1989 Act. The property’s value at the time the opinion was sought was around £1.8 million. The scheme was implemented to avoid inheritance tax. Further advice was also given regarding the rectification of the agreements and whether a professional negligence claim could be brought against the advisors who had put my client’s father into the scheme.

Deceased Estates – Taxation

High net worth deceased estate – extensive research and preparation of an advice to an executor of an estate with around £3 million of assets that the deceased person was non-UK domiciled for inheritance tax purposes, despite filing tax returns indicating that they were domiciled in the UK.  This meant that assets of the estate worth over £1.5 million outside the UK were not subject to inheritance tax at a rate of 40%.

High net worth individual deceased estate – preparation of tax planning advice to executors of an estate worth around £1.3 million in order to minimise inheritance tax on the estate. This involved advising the executors on how they could obtain the nil rate band for the deceased, the transferred nil rate band for the deceased’s spouse, and the residential nil rate band for both the deceased and the deceased’s spouse in circumstances where the surviving spouse had lost capacity. I provided detailed advice in order to make an application to the Court of Protection to effect changes by way of a Deed of Variation to the deceased’s will and to effect changes to the surviving spouse’s will.

High net worth individual – tax advice – extensive research and preparation of tax advice to the executor or the estate of a deceased client to ensure that the inheritance of a property was structured correctly to ensure that the residential nil rate band (“RNRB”) could be claimed for the deceased.  Around £425,000 of the estate was shielded from inheritance tax.

Corporate Taxation

Opinion for the London branch of a major international bank on the interpretation of the tax gross-up clause in a syndicated loan agreement – 17-page written opinion on a novel point of contractual interpretation in relation to the tax-gross-up clause of a syndicated loan agreement. My client was the London branch of a major international bank and had lent their client in Saudi Arabia around $500 million as part of a lending syndicate. This was a “high-stakes” matter. Authority on the point in issue was sparse, and I had to provide a well-reasoned “better view” opinion largely from the first principles of contractual interpretation as set out in Wood v Capita Insurance Services Ltd [2017] UKSC 24.

Tax advice / opinion on a restructure for an AIM-listed company valued at around £25 million– provision of UK, Australian and US tax advice to an AIM-listed company that was conducting a restructuring.  The tax advice included:

• how to tax-effectively transfer UK, Australian and US subsidiary companies under the main UK holding company without realising a capital gains tax charge in either the UK, Australia or the US; and

• whether tax losses of around £850,000 in the main UK subsidiary and tax losses of around $1.3 million in the US subsidiary could be utilised on the basis that there had either been no “ownership change” or they maintained substantially the same business. This matter involved complex interpretation of UK, Australian and US legislation and case law.

Tax advice to the directors of a leasehold company on how best to minimise tax on the sale proceeds of around £800,000 from the sale of a flat where the lease was forfeited, including:

• consideration of whether the proceeds could be retained in the company and “credited” to the accounts of the leaseholders without constituting a distribution/dividend for tax purposes. Consideration of the tax consequences of this option more generally;

• consideration of the tax consequences of winding up the company and returning the proceeds to leaseholders.

Cryptocurrency – private client tax

High Net Worth Individual – Taxation advice for a cryptocurrency trader – I was briefed to provide complex tax advice for a client operating a cryptocurrency arbitrage business (trading volume was around £20 million per year). I provided clear, detailed and robust tax advice on all aspects of his cryptocurrency arbitrage activities, including:

• the taxation treatment of the proceeds from the buying and selling of cryptocurrency;

• the taxation treatment of gains and losses made when he converts cryptocurrency received from the sale of his artworks to fiat currency;

• the VAT implications of his activity.

Taxation advice for a Metaverse / NFT project – a City accounting firm briefed me to provide a complicated tax advice for a client who was operating a Metaverse platform (the platform was valued at £100 million). The client was offering luxury goods for sale via its online platform and was also coupling the sale of a physical good with an NFT that gave the right to the corresponding digital good (e.g., the sale of a physical pair of luxury shoes was coupled with the sale of an NFT that gave the purchaser the right to a digital pair of luxury shoes that could be worn by that person’s avatar). The tax advice involved working with RPC to structure the project in a tax-effective way to minimise both corporate tax on profits and the client’s VAT compliance obligations. Tax advice included:

• suggested planning to minimise the client’s VAT obligations;

• a comprehensive analysis of the steps the client would need to take to ensure they comply with all their VAT obligations, particularly all the new VAT legislation that relates to “online marketplaces”;

• overview of whether a sale of luxury goods coupled with an NFT was a single supply or a multiple supply;

• consideration of how the VAT consequences of the client making gifts of either luxury goods or NFTs, and consideration of how output VAT may be minimised and claiming input VAT could be maximised;

• an overview of how the VAT voucher rules could potentially apply to the project the client was proposing to undertake; and

• an overview of how to defensibly tax-effectively structure the project in the British Virgin Islands to minimise tax.

Taxation advice for a Metaverse / NFT project – briefed by a City accounting firm to provide high-level UK tax advice to a client based in India who was issuing a new cryptocurrency. Tax advice included:

• how a Dubai entity could be used to minimise corporate tax;

• how the transaction could be structured to try and minimise tax on the cryptocurrency that the founders would receive on its issue;

• how the transaction should be structured to avoid triggering a tax liability in the UK;

• drafting a nominee agreement for a UK entity that was to hold cryptocurrency for the Dubai entity as a nominee.

Employment Tax Advice

Employment Tax Advice – advise for an employer on the taxation treatment of a payment of £500,000 that it intended to make to a former employee to settle a legal dispute regarding his pension, including:

• advice on the characterisation of the payment for tax purposes, and particularly, whether it could be considered to be an ex-gratia payment;

• whether the provisions of ITEPA 2003 applied to the payment such that it would be subject to income tax;

• the circumstances in which the payment could be treated as being subject to capital gains tax; and

• how to structure the payment most tax effectively to the former employee.

Stand Duty Land Tax

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) Advice – advising a property development company on whether the acquisition of a property for £3.8 million would be subject to SDLT at residential rates or non-residential rates, including:

• whether clearing a plot of land for development on the property to be acquired would be sufficient to have the property classified as non-residential for SDLT purposes;

• whether the higher rate surcharges provisions in Schedule 4ZA of Finance Act 2003 would apply to the transaction; and

• detailed consideration of the circumstances in which multiple dwelling relief would be available.

Selected tax litigation matters:

First-tier Tax Tribunal

Shinebrook Ltd v HMRC (2026 – judgment pending) – acting for the taxpayer challenging an assessment as to whether the taxpayer could claim Multiple Dwelling Relief (MDR).

W Reilly v HMRC (2026 – judgment pending) – acting for HMRC defending a Kittle VAT assessment valued at around £300,000.

B v HMRC (2026 – going to trial September 2026) – acting for HMRC in a complicated VAT “place of supply” £5 million dispute. The dispute was concerned with whether a taxpayer company supplying delivery services to other group members had made supplies in the UK for VAT purposes. Matters in issue include:

• whether the taxpayer company provided its services to a UK group company or a foreign group company;

• if the taxpayer company had provided its services to a foreign company, whether it could be said that these could be treated as a “single supply” with goods supplied by another group company (i.e. how the Telewest principle applied to this dispute).

C v HMRC (2026 – going to trial later in 2026) – acting for HMRC, defending an appeal against VAT assessments amounting to £2.5 million in relation to supplies of labour by a labour supply company. Follow on matter after obtaining a freezing injunction over the assets of the taxpayer company to the value of £2.5 million.

Arif Abidi v HMRC [2025] UKFTT 863 (TC) – acting for a client trying to resist a strike-out application in relation to IR-35 assessments that HMRC had made.

Advice / negotiation with HMRC for a taxpayer company (2024) – the tax in dispute was around £1 million. Advising a taxpayer negotiating with HMRC to try and settle £1 million of corporation tax that was disputed as owing, including:

• advising on whether the company was tax resident in the UK;

• advising on all procedural arguments to resist HMRC assessments dating back over 20 years; and

• coming up with a creative solution to argue that the company was not tax resident in the UK and that part of its profits were not attributable to overseas jurisdictions (I did advise the taxpayer to settle this matter)

VAT surcharge penalty appeal One Motion Logistics Limited v HMRC [2021] UKFTT 260 (TC) – acting for the appellant in a one-day hearing challenging two VAT surcharge penalties amounting to £130,000 VAT.

High Court

Umbrella Services Limited v HMRC (2025 – unreported) – interim freezing order – acting for the taxpayer resisting a freezing injunction that HMRC had obtained in relation to the taxpayer’s bank accounts in order to recover unpaid VAT that the taxpayer owed. The taxpayer ran an umbrella company payroll services business. The taxpayer disputed the amount of VAT that was owing and desired to keep his business running in the meantime. The interim injunction hearings were substantially related to whether there was an exception in the freezing order by which he could use his bank accounts to continue to run his business.

High Court Judicial Review Application (2025 – settled) – acting as a junior counsel for the taxpayer in a matter to dispute the validity of section 28B notices that had been issued to various individuals on the basis that they had not had the opportunity to ventilate their appeal rights in the Tribunal. The values in dispute for each individual vary from around £400,000 to £10,000,000. This matter has some way to run, and there are likely to be further hearings in the High Court and potentially in the Tax Tribunal.