Christian Bell

Christian Bell is a director and specialist in financial services indirect tax dispute resolution. He leads a team of fellow disputes and indirect tax specialists who act for a range of multinational financial services groups.

His practice has covered a number of disputes specific to the FS sector, including the scope of various VAT exemptions, input tax recovery/partial exemption challenges, anti-avoidance, VAT grouping and entitlement to claim, and HMRC penalty and assessment powers.

Christian’s work encompasses the primary conduct of alternative dispute resolution processes with HMRC as well as litigation before the UK and European Courts depending on what is required for each specific client matter.

Christian has recently been instrumental in the successful judicial review of HMRC in R(oao Phoenix Life Holdings Limited) v HMRC [2019] EWHC 2043 (Admin) and leads on the litigation relating to the scope of the exemption for payments, transfers, etc in Target Group Limited v HMRC [2019] UKUT 340 (TCC) which is very significant to operators within the payments sector. Christian has been heavily involved in the litigation which has settled the law on VAT grouping in Standard Chartered Bank v HMRC.

Christian is also a CEDR accredited mediator and has successfully engaged in a number of VAT focused alternative dispute resolution processes with HMRC concerning VAT liability issues, partial exemption, VAT compliance obligations and penalties.