Elizabeth Davidson reports

THE SPECIALIST tax set Gray's Inn Chambers has launched a case reporting service on the internet.

The Tax Case Reporting Service, launched by the chambers on 15 July, will make the results of some tax cases available within half an hour of a decision being reached.

Initially it will only include details of cases with which barristers at the set have been involved. However, the service's creator, barrister Conrad McDonnell, hopes to make arrangements with other barristers so that all tax cases will in future be covered.

He said that the site would provide clients with the fastest information service about new tax decisions in the UK.

"We had been thinking about a web site for some time and our pupil, Lisa Anderson, said why not put our cases onto it," said McDonnell.

"It is a new concept but we have already had compliments about it via e-mail from people in the tax profession."

It took two weeks for McDonnell, a junior barrister, to set up the site, for which purpose he had spent three days learning the web hypertext markup language (HTML).

The site currently includes only 15 tax cases, but this will increase when the data is backdated to the beginning of the year. There is also a short guide to the tax appeals process for the benefit of lay people plus links to other tax sites.

The initiative, which is provided free of charge, is intended to complement the Simon's Tax Intelligence weekly service and Simon's Tax Cases.

A link is provided to the full text of judgments where these are available online.

The site, which is at http:// www.taxbar.com, also contains a link to the House of Lords Internet Service.

According to McDonnell, the House of Lords service is the only other online provider of case reports directly from the source.