R Warner loses Upper Tribunal appeal over late multiple dwellings relief claim

The Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) has dismissed an appeal by a taxpayer seeking to recover stamp duty land tax through multiple dwellings relief (MDR) that he failed to claim within the statutory time limit, finding that his correspondence with HMRC could not be treated as a valid claim for overpayment relief.

In Richard Warner v The Commissioners for HMRC [2026] UKUT 284 (TCC), Judge Kevin Poole and Judge Ashley Greenbank upheld the First-tier Tribunal's earlier decision to strike out Mr Warner's appeal for want of jurisdiction, on the basis that HMRC had never made an appealable decision.

Mr Warner acquired two adjacent plots on the Isle of Wight in May 2016 and submitted land transaction returns without claiming MDR, paying SDLT calculated at £168,500 across both transactions. In July 2018, more than a year after the twelve-month deadline for amending land transaction returns had passed, he wrote to HMRC seeking a recalculation on the basis that the properties qualified for MDR, which would have reduced the liability to £41,300. HMRC refused, citing the expired time limit, and maintained that position in further correspondence through to October 2019. Mr Warner notified an appeal to the FTT in March 2022, and HMRC applied to strike it out on the ground that no decision falling within paragraph 35 of Schedule 10 to the Finance Act 2003 had ever been made.

Before the Upper Tribunal, Mr Warner, represented pro bono by Harriet Brown, Rebecca Sheldon and Zac Salmon through the Revenue Bar Association, argued that his 2018 letter should instead be treated as a claim for overpayment relief under paragraph 34 of Schedule 10, which carries a four-year rather than twelve-month time limit. HMRC, represented by Nicholas Macklam, maintained that the letter was plainly framed as an attempt to amend the original returns to claim MDR directly, not as a separate claim for overpayment relief.

The tribunal agreed with HMRC. It found that the natural reading of the July 2018 letter, and the subsequent correspondence in which Mr Warner continued pressing for a late amendment rather than invoking overpayment relief, showed no intention to make a paragraph 34 claim. The judges declined to treat a document as an overpayment relief claim simply because it sought discharge of tax believed to be over-assessed, where the mechanism it actually invoked was a different statutory route. Arguments based on Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights were rejected on the same basis, the tribunal finding no unfairness in Mr Warner having pursued one available route rather than both.

Because no valid overpayment relief claim had been made, the tribunal held that no enquiry or closure notice could have arisen in respect of one, meaning no right of appeal existed under paragraph 14 of Schedule 11A. Although this conclusion was sufficient to dispose of the appeal, the tribunal went on to consider whether such a claim, had it existed, would have succeeded. It found the FTT had erred in law by ruling the claim excluded under Case C of paragraph 34A without any supporting findings of fact, but concluded that HMRC would in any event have been entitled to refuse the claim under Case A, following the Upper Tribunal's reasoning in L-L-O Contracting Ltd v HMRC, on the basis that a failure to make an MDR claim amounted to a "mistake" within the meaning of that provision.

The appeal was dismissed.