Capital gains tax and Revenue errors

For many people it's tempting to defer to the Revenue's view. In some cases I'd agree particularly where the costs of any challenge would outweigh tax tax at stake. However just because it's the view of an individual Inspector doesn't make it correct and it's worthwhile taking independent advice. Aside from the so called 'help desks' which I've heard are pretty inaccurate on the whole, one area I've noticed a few revenue errors in is in the application of CGT taper relief. In fact some of the errors were pretty significant. I've had people showing me letters from the Revenue stating that an asset doesn't qualify as a business asset when it clearly does. Eg A owns a property that is used by a trading company to carry out a retain trade from. It was sold and the Inspector told them no business taper relief was due as they needed to own at least 5% in the company or be an employee. They even referred A to a Revenue help sheet. A was pretty shocked when I told them the property would qualify for business asset status as from April 2000, and this was even stated in the help sheet. So the morale of the story...well I've leave that for you to decide! NB contrary to popular belief there are circumstances when you can get business asset status on investment shares - check out this article