The UK shadow chancellor has branded Credit Suisse “outrageous” after the Swiss bank kicked off a legal battle to claw back £239m of bonus taxes it paid during the financial crisis a decade ago.

The Swiss bank is suing HM Revenue & Customs to recover taxes it paid on bonuses for 2009, which were subject to a one-off levy introduced by then Labour chancellor Alistair Darling at a time of widespread anger over bankers’ pay.

Aidan Robertson, Credit Suisse’s barrister, argued in court that the tax was “strikingly unfair” on the Swiss bank and others who paid it, because some of their competitors avoided the levy or paid only trivial amounts due to the timing of their bonus payouts.

He said rivals including Nomura, Rothschild and Royal Bank of Canada avoided the one-off tax because they paid their bonuses outside the 117-day period when it was in effect. The UK’s “bonus tax” ran from December 2009 to April 2010.

Mr Robertson argued that the levy was in breach of EU rules on state aid because some banks managed to avoid the tax while the majority were forced to pay it.

“The [bank payroll tax] penalised us and gave certain competitors a leg-up in the market,” he said.

However, John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor, told the Financial Times: “This is outrageous and Credit Suisse should pay these taxes. People in this country want the rich to shoulder their fair share of responsibilities.”

The one-off bank payroll tax was introduced by Mr Darling during the depths of the financial crisis and applied a 50 per cent levy on individual bonuses of more than £25,000. The tax was paid by banks rather than individual employees. Credit Suisse cut its bonus pool by 5 per cent to cover the cost of the tax.

At the time, Mr Darling said he was introducing the tax because banks were prioritising “substantial bonuses to some already highly paid staff” rather than using profits to “rebuild their financial strength”.

The levy ended up raising far more than Mr Darling had intended — £3.4bn versus initial Treasury projections of £550m.

Credit Suisse was also criticised by the High Pay Centre, the UK think-tank, which said the Swiss bank had “failed to read the public mood or just doesn’t care about it”.

“This tax was introduced to help plug funding for public services after revenues from a lightly regulated financial services industry collapsed owing to the sector’s reckless conduct,” said Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre.

He added: “It’s surprising that nobody from the Credit Suisse PR team suggested not to publicly demand money back from schools and hospitals.” Credit Suisse said it “considers the 2010 bank payroll tax to have been inherently discriminatory by virtue of an unusually short chargeable period, which meant it was unequally applied to some banks and not others, putting those banks at a competitive disadvantage”.

The bank added: “We have been in discussion with HM Revenue & Customs on this point of law for some time, and believe that an important principle is at stake in these proceedings.”

HMRC said “We are rigorously defending this claim and seeking to protect tax lawfully collected in 2010.” The trial is expected to last for three days. The case continues.

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