Fowler v. HMRC Commissioners - First-Tier Tribunal finds that “treatment is the meaning:” employment income deemed by U.K. domestic legislation to be from carrying on a “trade” was therefore deemed by Art. 3(2) to be “business profits” for Treaty purposes

A U.K. domestic income tax provision (“s. 15 ITTOIA”) deemed the diving activities of a South African resident in the North Sea to be the carrying on of a U.K trade, notwithstanding that in fact he was an employee. The diver successfully argued that this meant that Art. 3(2) of the U.K-South Africa Treaty (which, in the standard OECD form, provided that any term not defined in the Treaty “shall, unless the context otherwise requires, have the meaning that it has …under the law of [the U.K.]”), deemed his earnings to be business profits for purposes of Art. 7 of the Treaty, so that they escaped U.K. taxation (as he had no permanent establishment in the U.K.) Brannan J stated:

It is the clear purpose of section 15 ITTOIA to re-characterise what would otherwise be the exercise of employment duties as the carrying on of a trade. In so doing, in my view, section 15 ITTOIA has the meaning that the activities of an employed diver in the UK Continental Shelf constitute trading activities and that the income therefrom must be trading income and, consequently, business profits within Article 7 – the treatment is the meaning.

Thus, Art. 3(2) applied notwithstanding that the domestic provision in question was blatantly a deeming provision rather than a definition and merely deemed the underlying activity to be a trading activity rather than explicitly deeming the resulting income to be “profits” of an enterprise.

Brannan J also stated:

If a Contracting State changes its domestic law after the conclusion of a double tax treaty in such a way as to reallocate income from one article to another...that could contravene the requirements of good faith imposed by Article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention... .

That issue did not arise here as the domestic deeming provision was enacted well in advance of the Treaty in order to give a break (through greater deductions) to divers, whose activities were dangerous.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Fowler v. HMRC Commissioners, [2016] UKFT 0234 (TC) under Treaties – Art. 3.