A businessman who was jailed for running loss-making companies while bankrupt and disqualified from acting as a director has had his sentence reduced after the Court of Appeal accepted that he had been too harshly punished. The man had repeatedly…
In a case that revealed the extraordinary power of marketing, Aleksandr the meerkat and his 750,000 Facebook 'friends' played a critical role in achieving victory for price comparison website comparethemarket.com in a trade mark dispute with rivals GoCompare.com. The loveable…
The EU Consumer Rights Directive covers all consumer contracts for goods and services and is intended to harmonise and simplify consumer protection rules across EU member states. The Directive is implemented into UK law by the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation…
Following a consultation seeking ways to prevent the abuse of zero hours contracts whilst also maximising opportunities both for employers seeking to create jobs and for individuals to obtain work that suits them, the Government has announced that it will…
When a family business is handed down and ownership is split between two or more members of the next generation, the result can all too often be discord. Normally, this can be resolved by one party buying out the other,…
Regulation 8(7) of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) disapplies the normal rules that apply when there is a relevant transfer of a business if 'the transferor is the subject of bankruptcy proceedings or any analogous…
Taxpayers will welcome confirmation by the First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) that agreements with HMRC may be in full and final settlement without being explicitly labelled as such. However, if relying on this implicit status, taxpayers must carefully analyse the correspondence…
The First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) has held that a significant change in business constituted a cessation of one business and the commencement of a second business. Consequently, the taxpayer in this case was able to claim entrepreneurs' relief on the…
Businesses that use flexi-time schemes should take note of a recent EAT judgment that an employee, who was not paid on termination of employment for over 1000 extra hours worked under a flexi-hours scheme, had not suffered an unlawful deduction…
The Sentencing Council has published a sentencing guideline for environmental offences which sets out a 12-step sentencing process to punish offenders, prevent reoffending and remove financial gain. The guideline uses turnover as a starting point in the process of setting…