Taxation

Income tax (schedule E) - expenditure by rugby player on dietary supplements not allowable deductionAnsell (Inspector of Taxes) v Brown: ChD (Mr Justice Lightman): 23 May 2001The taxpayer was a professional rugby player employed by a rugby club.

He incurred expenditure on vitamin, protein and other dietary supplements for the purposes of achieving and maintaining the required level of fitness, size and physique for a back-row forward.

The tax inspector refused to allow deduction of that expenditure from his income under section 198(1) of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 (now section 6(1) of the Finance Act 1998).

An appeal by the taxpayer was upheld by general commissioners.

The Crown appealed.Katherine Selway (instructed by the solicitor of Inland Revenue) for the Crown.

Gareth Morley (instructed by David Edward Rees & Co, Treherbert) for the taxpayer.Held, allowing the appeal, that the hurdles in front of a claim to entitlement to deduction under section 198 of the 1988 Act were formidable, stringent and rigid; that expenditure had to be incurred in the performance of the office and not merely to enable an employee to prepare or qualify himself better to perform his duties; that plainly the taxpayer's expenditure on supplements had been incurred to assist him in his own personal circumstances achieve and maintain the fitness required of him by his employers; but that that did not constitute expenditure by him in the performance of his duties but rather expenditure to enable him to perform them and as such could not be allowable as a deduction in computing his schedule E liability.