Incident Tracker / United Kingdom
Elden v Commissioners for HMRC, [2026] UKFTT 41 (TC)
·First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber)·UKOther
Before the First-tier Tax Tribunal, Gary Elden's representatives, chartered accountants regulated by the ICAEW, filed a skeleton argument that used AI and misstated three real authorities. The tribunal refused HMRC's strike-out application but imposed strict directions requiring full judgment texts, pinpoint citations and statements of truth identifying who verified each cited case.
- Court
- First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber)
- Date
- 2026-01-08
- Who used the AI
- Not recorded
- AI tool
- Not identified in the record
- Conduct
- The appellant's representatives — Strauss Phillips & Co, chartered accountants regulated by the ICAEW — filed a skeleton argument, prepared with AI, that materially misstated three real authorities (Hok, Atlantic Electronics and Leeds City Council v HMRC). The representative later confirmed AI had been used.
- Outcome
- Other
- Penalty
- No monetary penalty recorded
- Regulatory outcome
- No separate regulatory disposition recorded
- Status
- Verified against listed sources
- Last checked
- 2026-09-04
What was fabricated or misused
- Atlantic Electronics Ltd v HMRC [2012] UKUT 45 (TCC) — skeleton said it concerned strike-out and prior case-management powers; tribunal found that inaccurate
- Leeds City Council v HMRC [2014] UKUT 0350 (TCC) — skeleton implied it addressed denying a full hearing on the merits; tribunal found that misleading
- Hok Ltd v HMRC [2011] UKUT 363 (TCC) — cited with an incorrect year and summarised as a strike-out case; tribunal found no competent human could summarise it that way
- BPP Holdings Ltd v HMRC [2016] UKSC 55 — skeleton used the wrong year for the Supreme Court decision
What the court said
“Through the Appellant at the hearing, the representative neither confirmed nor denied the use of AI, and said they stood by the summaries and it didn’t matter whether AI was used or not.”
“I am satisfied that the case of Atlantic Electronics is not directly relevant to this case and that the summary produced in the Appellant’s skeleton argument is inaccurate.”
“I find that the case summaries were produced using AI and that they have not been verified for accuracy with sufficient care as should be used when producing submissions for a Tribunal hearing.”
“The skeleton argument must be accompanied by the full judgement of each case referred to by the skeleton argument. In addition, all references to cases in the skeleton argument must be referred to by direct quotes from the judgement, referenced by paragraph number or page and line references if no paragraph numbers are available.”
Timeline
- The appellant notified his appeal to the tribunal.
- The tribunal issued directions governing documents, witness statements, listing, bundle and authorities.
- The appellant's AI-assisted skeleton argument was provided.
- HMRC raised concerns about AI use and inaccurate authorities.
- The tribunal heard HMRC's strike-out application.
- A draft decision was sent, prompting correspondence about the summaries.
- The tribunal refused strike-out but imposed strict directions for future skeletons.
Why this case matters
Elden extends the UK tax-tribunal sequence from Harber v HMRC's litigant-in-person facts to a regulated accountancy firm acting as representative. The tribunal did not strike out the tax appeal, but it treated the AI-assisted summaries as professional incompetence and imposed case-management controls for any later skeleton. The decision also applies the verification duties discussed in Ayinde v Haringey outside the solicitor-and-barrister setting, requiring named responsibility for who checked each factual statement and authority.
Practice note
A representative who uses AI to shorten or draft a skeleton must check the result against The National Archives, legislation.gov.uk, official law reports, or a recognised publisher before filing. For this tribunal, every future cited case had to be supplied in full, quoted with paragraph or page references, and accompanied by a statement of truth identifying who checked each fact or case summary.
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
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Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “Elden v Commissioners for HMRC, [2026] UKFTT 41 (TC)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/elden-v-hmrc (accessed 2026-09-16). Data: CC BY 4.0.