Timothy Thomas Rogers

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

The respondent, a former sole practitioner, was convicted on indictment at Leeds Crown Court of two counts of Cheat the Public Revenue and sentenced to 21 months imprisonment plus a £5,000 confiscation order. He had submitted SDLT forms understating property purchase prices to avoid SDLT (depriving HMRC of £49,860 owed by clients) and submitted an inflated VAT repayment claim of £79,397. The Tribunal found all three allegations proved on the certificate of conviction, found no exceptional circumstances (his health issues having been considered at sentencing), and found the conduct involved repeated, calculated and deliberate dishonesty. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £2,857.20.

Duties found breached:

• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Repeated dishonesty over a period of time which was calculated and deliberate
• Clients suffered losses and HMRC was deprived of large SDLT payments
• Deliberately concealed the true position by entering different figures on HMRC and Land Registry forms
• As a solicitor he knew his clients would suffer most as the Revenue would pursue them
• No evidence of insight or remorse

Mitigating factors:

• Reference to the respondent's health issues (though no medical evidence before the Tribunal and already taken into account at sentencing)