British American Tobacco: Court Has Issued Its Judgment In Tax Case

British American Tobacco PLC (BATS.LN) Wednesday said the Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in the case of The Test Claimants in the FII Group Litigation versus The Commissioners for HM Revenue and Customs.

 MAIN FACTS: -Judgment concerns a number of issues but the main issue of relevance to British American Tobacco concerned the lawfulness of retrospective legislation introduced by s107 of Finance Act 2007, or FA '07. -Company is the principal test claimant in that group litigation, or GLO, in which the claims of 25 company groups are enrolled. -Will be studying the judgment in detail with external counsel and deciding on the future course of action. -Claimants contend that they were discriminated against in breach of E.U. law by the imposition of U.K. corporation tax charges, mostly in the form of advance corporation tax, upon the distribution of foreign sourced income. -Effect of the judgment is to enable British American Tobacco and other claimants who issued their claims at about the same time to pursue claims for the recovery of unlawfully imposed U.K. corporation tax back, in most cases, to 1973.