Matt Boddington LL.B(Hons)

Matt worked at HM Revenue & Customs for over 10 years, where he rose quickly through the ranks to specialise in employment status and PAYE, travelling and subsistence, NIC and CIS compliance for 5 years.  This extensive experience of HMRC’s policies, procedures and tactics provided Matt with a solid foundation for his career move to Accountax Consulting in May 2001, where again Matt impressed and was rapidly appointed as a director, eventually taking the helm as Managing Director in October 2008.  In April 2012 Matt resolved to move on from Accountax and left in December 2012 to form a new legal services consultancy with Mark Taylor.  Matt & Mark’s vision is to use their combined 30 years’ experience, their successes in hundreds of Tribunal cases, and their in depth frontline knowledge to provide a service that is simply second to none.

During his career Matt has developed a unique perspective on the law, and a unique specialism.  Matt has successfully blended an encyclopaedic knowledge of both tax and general employment law like no other adviser.  Always keen to stay at the sharp end of client advice, Matt appears regularly in both the tax and employment tribunals and has experience of appearing as an advocate before the General Commissioners, the Special Commissioners, the First-tier and Upper-tier Tax Tribunals, and the Employment and Employment Appeal Tribunals.  There are few other advisers in the country who can boast Matt’s experience, and in a field where tax and employment law are important in equal measure – and sometimes come into conflict – this experience is an invaluable commodity.  Matt has won more contentious IR35 cases than any other advocate (5 in total) with a 100% track record, and this accounts for over half of all the IR35 successes against HMRC.

Matt has a meticulous eye for detail and is certainly not afraid to hold HMRC to account when the department fails to follow the law.  His philosophy is that client advice always needs to be clear, accurate and practical.

See below for some of Matt’s notable Tribunal case studies.

Notable victories (employment tribunal judgments are not published and cannot be reported without the party’s consent):

Primary Path: (IR35) This First-tier Tax Tribunal was one of Matt’s IR35 successes, notable for Matt’s successfully argued proposition (which HMRC disputed) that the IR35 contractor is exposed to significant financial risk in a way that employees are not.

ECR Consulting: (IR35) Another of Matt’s IR35 successes, where the validity of the substitution clause in the contractor’s contract with her agency was successfully argued, despite the fact that substitution had never occurred.

Serpol: (PAYE Agency Rules) Matt’s forensic eye for detail was utilised to good effect when HMRC served a National Insurance notice on a service supplier.  As well as disputing the underlying liability, Matt successfully challenged the entire validity of the issue of the notice as HMRC themselves had not complied with the legislation.

MBF Designs: (IR35) Matt was the first advocate appointed to appear in an IR35 case before the First-tier Tax Tribunal, and continued his unblemished IR35 track record with a skilful cross-examination and destruction of the credibility of HMRC’s end-user witness to add another IR35 win to his account.

First Word Software: (IR35) A resounding IR35 win on all three of the major factors of substitution, mutuality of obligation and control before the Special Commissioners of Income Tax.

Carter Lauren Construction: (CIS) HMRC attempted to prevent a construction company from applying for gross payment status within 6 months of failing an original application, on the basis that it would be an abuse of process.  Matt successfully argued before the Tribunal that the company was not estopped from applying and that the application could go forward.

A D Bly Construction: (Holiday Pay) Matt successfully argued before the Employment Appeal Tribunal that a self-employed labourer was not only genuinely self-employed, but was not even a ‘worker’ for the purposes of The Working Time Regulations and thus did not qualify for holiday pay.  This decision is key as it supports the argument that mutuality of obligation is a necessary component of a ‘worker’s’ contract as well as an employee’s.

R J Prentice Brickwork: (Holiday Pay) Although HMRC would struggle to accept that a foreman or chargehand could be self-employed, Matt successfully appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal that the claimant in this case was genuinely self-employed and not entitled to holiday pay.

Contact: [email protected] or 07739 709643