Finance (No.2) Bill 2017
23 March 2017
Of the Finance Bill 2017 Jane Ellison, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said:
“With this Finance Bill we continue to take important steps towards a fair and sustainable tax system, that raises and protects the revenues needed to fund public services and ensures those with the broadest shoulders contribute the most.
The bill also introduces measures to make the tax system fairer and enhance the sustainability of our public finances, by:
- ensuring that large businesses pay the right amount of tax in line with OECD recommendations that prevent them from reducing their taxable profits with excessive interest (announced at Budget 2016);
- ensuring that corporations making substantial profits cannot offset all their tax liability with past losses (announced at Budget 2016);
- ending the permanency of non-dom status (announced at Summer Budget 2015) while encouraging greater investment in the UK through expanding the Business Investment Relief (announced at Autumn Statement 2016)
- reforming the rules around salary sacrifice (announced at Autumn Statement 2016) …”
The future tax system may yet prove to be modern, fair and more sustainable however simplicity isn’t going to be a key feature as the explanatory notes alone run to 448 pages and the Finance (No.2) Bill over 700.