Clause 51 - Use of different accounting practices
Finance Bill
10:45 am
Mr Quentin Davies (Grantham and Stamford, Conservative)
I was very unsatisfied by the Minister's reply to me about subsection (4). He did not attempt to defend his wording, and did not give the Committee any explanation. Nor did he tell me why my interpretation was wrong. He merely said that the wording replicated the wording somewhere else in tax legislation. I presume that when we come to that wording, we shall be told that we cannot discuss it because it appears in section 170 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 as amended by the clause. We are going round in circles, with the Government avoiding their fundamental responsibility to explain the rationale behind the wording to the Committee and to the public. I explained why I believe that the wording is susceptible to an extremely perverse interpretation. Indeed, a very perverse understanding of it is the natural reading of the words. I repeat my question: will he explain why the words that I quoted do not bear the interpretation that they appear to have?