Matthew Donmall

Matthew Donmall is recognised as a leading junior in tax: VAT and excise by the Legal 500 and is a member of the Attorney General’s A Panel of counsel.

Matt has expertise in all matters of indirect taxation, including VAT, import and customs duties, excise duties, gaming duties, as well as the interface between tax law and public law. He has appeared in tribunals and courts all the way to the Supreme Court. He is regularly instructed in complex multi-million pound, high profile cases. He has particular experience with disputes involving financial services and pensions, public law arguments, partial exemption methods, attribution and apportionment arguments, single / multiple supply issues, and classification disputes in respect of technological products.

His busy rating and council tax practice involves both advisory and advocacy instructions across the range of issues arising in these areas, including valuation methods, valuation disputes, deletion proposals, non-domestic / domestic distinctions, and technical jurisdictional points. He has worked on a wide variety of property types, including retail, power plants, petrol stations, warehouses, office blocks, agricultural buildings, hotels, waste processing stations and public amenities. Having appeared in the leading case of SJ&J Monk v Newbigin, Matt frequently acts in deletion cases involving repair, refurbishment and schemes of work.

The son of two doctors, Matt has medicine in the family. His expertise in clinical negligence spans both liability and quantum issues, and the difficult points of causation that can intersect them. He has experience across the spectrum of medical areas, including obstetric / perinatal injury; gastroenterology; delayed cancer diagnosis; orthopaedic and other surgery; general practice, ophthalmology and dentistry.

Outside the law and where the demands of his family allow, Matt enjoys tennis, cycling and the occasional triathlon.