Making Tax Digital - Autumn Statement

Snap election means shorter finance act passed

 

The original Finance Bill published after the Spring Budget ran to nearly 700 pages. As a result of the announcement of the General Election on 8th June a significantly shorter Finance Bill was passed with many of the more detailed and more controversial measures being deferred to a later Bill. Whether those measures will reappear after the election will depend upon who wins on 8th June.

Among the tax changes that didn’t make the cut was the legislation to introduce Making Tax Digital, all of the corporation tax changes such as those affecting company losses and the changes affecting non-domiciled Individuals.

However the changes affecting workers supplying their services to the public sector via their own personal service company were enacted with effect from 6 April 2017.

Many hope that the deferral of the Making Tax Digital legislation to the next Finance Bill may mean that the planned start date in April 2018 will also be deferred. There will certainly be more time for proper debate of the proposed changes and the Treasury Select committee still has a number of reservations about the speedy implementation of such a significant change to the UK tax system. Watch this space.