Clause 24 - Deduction cases
Finance Bill
10:15 am
Dawn Primarolo (Paymaster General, HM Treasury; Bristol South, Labour)
We will come to that.
Those rules are not alien, but they need to be determined on a case-by-case basis and by reference to the individual facts and circumstances relating to each taxpayer. However, HMRC has issued detailed guidance, which continues to be updated, in consultation with others, to provide as much certainty to business as possible.
Clause 26 introduces separate rules applying to receipts. Clause 28 sets out the procedure governing the issue of the notices under the legislation. I shall cover the operation of those clauses in more detail later.
The group of amendments divides naturally, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, into two subgroups. The first consists of all the amendments apart from amendments Nos. 30 and 31. It would alter the way in which the notices under arbitrage legislation are issued. The second group would alter the conditions that need to be met for the legislation to apply.
As they stand, the clauses require a notice to be issued by the commissioners of HMRC if they have reasonable grounds to believe that legislation might apply. HMRC has responsibility for the care and management of corporation tax and is responsible for its administration. The amendments in the first group would instead require notices to be issued by the special commissioners, who are an independent tribunal body whose responsibility includes hearing appeals against corporate tax assessments.
Those amendments would not alter the effect of the legislation, but, significantly, they would add new administrative and legal costs to the companies it affects and to HMRC. The Opposition constantly tell us that we should not be doing that, but their amendments—for no gain on the principles of the legislation or the rights of taxpayers—would simply put in place a bureaucratic, longer method to achieve the same end result, and it would be more costly to businesses.