Clause 71
Finance (No. 2) Bill
4:45 pm
Paul Goodman (Shadow Minister (Childcare), Treasury; Wycombe, Conservative)
That is correct, Sir John.
I beg to move amendment No. 100, in page 61[Vol I], leave out lines 31 to 44.
The reason for that change is as follows: as the Committee will be aware from listening to the Paymaster General’s response to the amendments that were tabled to clause 69, clauses 69 and 71 are closely related. In the debate on clause 69 she dealt with the arguments in the three amendments that I do not wish to discuss.
However, amendment No. 100 is discrete. The lines it proposes to delete refer to an arrangement of notices. It is a probing amendment, seeking to explore the regime of notices that the clause would write into the Bill. The clause does not impose a tax system that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs may challenge in the formal manner if it disagrees with the self-assessment. It would instead allow HMRC to issue a notice, which arguably represents issuing a notice by diktat. We should be grateful to hear a reason for the measure, particularly because the tax planning that would trigger the issue of the notice would probably have to be disclosed to HMRC under the disclosure of tax avoidance scheme rules, which are being extended in their remit. So HMRC should not be ignorant of the planning undertaken. There also seems to be nothing in the clause that enables a company to appeal against such a notice. It could be argued that that gives tothe Executive considerable powers that they shouldnot have.