Dear HM Revenue and Customs,

Your website provides information about tax relief for national heritage assets https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-relief-f..., commonly referred to as conditional exemption, and indicates that if the owner of an asset does not keep to the agreement reached with HMRC to allow access to the public, the conditional exemption from tax is withdrawn and the tax must be paid.

Please confirm, for each of the last seven tax years:

1. How many cases HMRC has investigated where the withdrawal of heritage asset conditional exemption has been considered?
2. How many heritage asset conditional exemptions have been withdrawn?

Yours faithfully,

Duncan Dollimore
Head of campaigns, Cycling UK

Dear HM Revenue and Customs,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of HM Revenue and Customs's handling of my FOI request 'Withdrawal of national heritage asset condition exemption from tax'.

You confirm in your letter dated 17 May 2021 that HMRC does hold the information I requested, namely, for each of the last seven tax years:

1. How many cases HMRC has investigated where the withdrawal of heritage asset
conditional exemption has been considered?
2. How many heritage asset conditional exemptions have been withdrawn?

The answer to each of those questions should be a number, and you implicitly accept that in your acknowledgement that “the quantity of cases are low”.

Nevertheless, you have refused to provide the information requested, relying upon the confidentiality exemption provided within section 44(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act.

As the guidance from the Information Commissioner makes clear, information is covered by the section 41 exemption if:

1. It was obtained by the authority from any other person.
2. Its disclosure would constitute a breach of confidence.
3. A legal person could bring a court action for that breach of confidence, and
4. That court action would be likely to succeed.

I have not asked for disclosure of the details of any investigation, or any tax records. In fact, the information I have requested is not even information provided to HMRC by any other person. Both of my questions focus on what HMRC has done, not what has been provided to it, and can be answered without the disclosure of any information which has been provided to HMRC which might be considered confidential information.

The distinction is clear from the overview information within the Commissioner’s guidance, which states that when determining if disclosure would constitute a breach of confidence, the authority will usually need to consider:

1. Whether the information has the quality of confidence.
2. Whether it was imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence.
3. Whether disclosure would be an unauthorised use of the information to the detriment of the confider.

The detail of investigations and the information provided therein may be confidential, but the number undertaken cannot be, and the answers to my questions do not involve the disclosure of anything provided to HMRC in confidence.

I therefore request an internal review of the refusal to provide the information requested.

Yours faithfully

Duncan Dollimore
Head of campaigns, Cycling UK

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/w...

Dear WMBC FOI Mailbox,

I have already requested an internal review of the refusal to provided the information requested concerning the withdrawal of conditional exemptions from tax.

I neglected to include within that request my submission that my request should also be considered as a request under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.

HMRC have declined to provide the information requested on the basis that the prohibition on disclosure under section 44 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) applies, because disclosure is prohibited by section 23(1) of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005 (CRCA).

Without at this stage accepting HMRC's assertion regarding section 44 FOIA and section 23(1) CRCA, I would respectfully point out that the information requested, which concerns access to land, is clearly environmental information within the meaning of regulation 2 of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004.

Whilst I acknowledge that I did submit my request with reference to FOIA rather than the EIR, the guidance clearly indicates that where the information requested from a public body is environmental, that the request must be handled under the EIR. There is no equivalent to section 44 FOIA in the EIR, and regulation 5(6) of the EIR specifically states that "any enactment or rule of law that would prevent disclosure of information in accordance with these regulations shall not apply".

In those circumstances, my request should have been dealt with under the EIR if HMRC believed the section 44 FOIA exemption applied, and the information must be disclosed unless exempt by virtue of an exception within the EIR, none of which apply.

I would therefore be grateful if my request could also be reconsidered as an EIR request.

Yours faithfully

Duncan Dollimore
Head of campaigns, Cycling UK