Four cases concerning tax law came before the Supreme Court in the 2010–11 legal year. In Holland v Revenue and Customs Commissioners,1 the issue was whether the respondent Holland had acted as a de facto director for the 42 insolvent companies in question, of which HM Revenue and Customs Commissioners (HMRC) was the sole creditor in respect of corporation tax. On this basis it was alleged that Holland had been guilty of misfeasance and breach of duty in causing the payment of dividends to the companies’ shareholders when the companies had insufficient distributable reserves to pay their creditors. The Court held by a bare majority that Mr Holland had simply discharged his duties as the director of the corporate director, and as such was not a de facto director. Therefore, he was not personally answerable to the HMRC’s claim under Section 212 of the Insolvency Act 1986. It should be noted that the importance of this case is likely to be limited: Section 155(1) of the Companies Act 2006 now requires that a company must have at least one director who is a natural person who could, if necessary, be held to account for the company’s actions.2 Revenue and Customs Commissioners v DCC Holdings (UK) Ltd3 involved a complex tax avoidance scheme. The arrangement involved five repo transactions concerning gilts. A repo transaction is a fixed price sale and purchase of gilts, which has the equivalent economic effect of a short term secured loan.4 The tax legislation looks to the substance of such arrangements, and is intended to treat the transactions as loans.5 Thus, the repo transactions are deemed to produce credits and debits between the parties which are subject to tax. The purpose of the appellant’s scheme was to create a loss for the company for tax purposes without suffering genuine economic loss. Under the relevant legislation, this seemed perfectly possible. The company appeared to be able to claim a tax loss of £28.8m, while garnering a mere £2.9m of taxable credit. Nevertheless, the justices were driven to find a “symmetrical solution” to avoid the