RevenueCapital gains tax - retirement relief - sale of business in two separate transactions - not sufficiently connected to form single disposal Purves (Inspector of Taxes) v Harrison: ChD (Blackburn J): 7 November 2000The taxpayer intended to retire and to sell his coach transport business to H.

H had trouble raising the finance and in March 1989, while still negotiating with H, the taxpayer sold the business premises to a third party.

Subsequently, in December 1990 H purchased the business from the taxpayer and obtained a lease of the premises from the third party.The taxpayer appealed against an assessment to capital gains tax raised on him in respect of the sale of the premises.

General commissioners upheld his claim to relief under s.69 of the Finance Act 1985 (now s.163 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992) holding the sale of the premises to be part of the sale of the taxpayer's business.

The Crown appealed.Christopher Tidmarsh (instructed by the solicitor of the Inland Revenue) for the Crown; Greg Sinfield (solicitor advocate with Lovells) for the taxpayer.Held, allowing the appeal, that for the purposes of the relief a disposal of a business could be by way of sales of assets used in the business at different times to two or more purchasers; that there had however to be a sufficient connection between the two sales to justify a conclusion that what was involved formed a single disposal; and that the commissioners were not entitled so to hold on the facts found by them.