Howard Watkinson

Practice Areas

Howard specialises in indirect tax and customs disputes and also practices in the areas of personal and corporation taxes. Howard also has experience of freezing orders and director disqualification proceedings. Howard is one of the only leading juniors at the tax bar with experience in both civil and criminal courts, and tax tribunals.

Howard appeared in the Pfizer litigation before the CJEU (Pfizer [2020] EUECJ C-182/19) and in three important indirect tax cases in the Court of Appeal recently: Eynsham Cricket Club v HMRC [2021] EWCA Civ 225 (charity VAT), Munir v HMRC [2021] EWCA Civ 799 (impact of criminal convictions on excise duty assessments), and Tower Bridge GP Ltd v HMRC [2022] EWCA Civ 998 (the leading case on invalid VAT invoices).

Howard has appeared in several important High Court, UT and FTT decisions recently on cases covering: human rights and freezing orders (HMRC v Malde [2023] EWHC 1188 (Ch)), judicial review for legitimate expectation (Airline Placement Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v HMRC [2023] EWHC 1191 (Admin)), VAT deregistration (Nourish Training Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v HMRC [2023] EWHC 350 (Admin), Impact Contracting Solutions Ltd v HMRC [2023] UKUT 215 (TCC)), public authority VAT exemptions (Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust v HMRC [2022] UKUT 267 (TCC), VAT exemptions for food, buildings, philanthropic organisations and charities, and VAT penalties.

Career

Called 2006; appointed to Attorney-General’s A-Panel of Counsel 2019, appointed fee-paid Judge of the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) 2022.

Professional Memberships

RBA