It's a hypothetical (but could be real) situation, but trying to get my head around attribution of rights etc under CTA 2010 s451. In particular s451(4)(c) and s448(1)(c).
Ignoring all other factors, let's say we have companies A and B owned/controlled by two quite separate trusts but which have the same settlor. We can reasonably assume that there exists somewhere in the world a person P who is a linear descendant of the settlor, but P has got absolutely nothing to do with either of the companies or the trusts.
HMRC tell us that whilst rights attributed to P don't matter for the purposes of establishing whether either company is close, we can nevertheless attribute rights in determining control. Following what appears to be fairly straightforward language, it seems that we can attrubute to P the rights and powers of the trustees of both companies, meaning that A and B would treated as under common control. The consequence of this is that any two companies controlled by trusts with a common settlor will invariably be treated as connected even though there may be absolutely no other connection between the two. Is this correct, or have I overlooked some excluding provision?
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Where is TD when you need her?
It's surprising, to me at least, that a tax liability is dependent upon whether or not the settlor has children.
Your query echoes Reeves [2018] UKUT 0293 where a remote connection nearly scuppered relief.