Clause 65
Finance Bill
10:15 am
Edward Balls (Economic Secretary, HM Treasury; Normanton, Labour)
As I understand it, the hon. Lady asked me to confirm whether section 80 applies. The answer to that is that it does. Given that she did not ask me about that, I will not answer it.
The hon. Lady asked about reversionary lease schemes. HMRC has just changed the tax rules so that people will not have had time to elect. Those schemes will benefit from the provisions for late elections in clause 65.
The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet asked me about the particular example of the sales of houses, which we discussed at length last year. As she knows, the original rules provide an exemption for the owner of an asset who sells their whole interest in the asset on arm’s length terms and continues to enjoy it. Subsequent regulation extended that exemption to certain sales of a part-interest: for example, part-sales at arm’s length. In general, it is not appropriate to provide exemption for sales of a part-interest, which are made in ways other than at arm’s length. If one member of a family needs to raise cash and another member is willing and able to provide it, there are other and more straightforward ways of structuring that to an equity-release transaction.