The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
The Government have consulted on a number of tax policies following their announcement at Budget 2014. Today, the Government are publishing responses to these consultations alongside draft legislation to be included in Finance Bill 2015. This fulfils our objective to confirm the majority of intended tax changes at least three months ahead of publication. Draft legislation will be open for technical consultation until 4 February 2015.
The Government are publishing draft legislation on policies announced at Budget 2014 and earlier, including:
A package of four changes in response to the Office of Tax Simplification’s recommendations for simplifying the system of employee benefits and expenses;
The introduction of capital gains tax on future gains made by non-residents disposing of UK residential property from April 2015;
A measure to allow the Government to make regulations which give non-charity intermediaries a greater role in operating gift aid;
A registration scheme for alcohol wholesalers to reduce the illicit trade in alcohol products.
The Government will also publish draft legislation on policies announced at the autumn statement 2014 including:
An increase in the level of the income tax personal allowance to £10,600 from April 2015;
A new tax relief for the production of children’s television programmes.
A new tax—the diverted profits tax—to counter the use of aggressive tax planning techniques used by multinational enterprises to divert profits from the UK will be applied from 1 April 2015 using a 25% rate;
Legislation that gives the UK power to implement the G20-OECD agreed model for country-by-country reporting;
The Government have also published draft legislation for the following Finance Bill 2015 measures, with effect from 10 December 2014:
Inheritance tax simplification of trust charges and new rules to target tax avoidance through the use of multiple trusts
The Government are introducing rules about adding property to trusts on the same day to target inheritance tax avoidance through the use of multiple trusts. This will apply to all charges arising on or after 6 April 2015 in respect of all relevant property trusts created on or after 10 December 2014. To prevent forestalling, it will also apply to relevant property trusts created before 10 December 2014 where property is added on or after this date to more than one trust on the same day. The Government are also making changes involving the relevant property rules relating to appointments for the benefit of the deceased’s surviving partner, which will apply to all deaths on or after 10 December 2014.
Simplifying “link company” requirements for consortium claims
With effect from 10 December, the Government have published draft legislation to simplify the tax system by removing all requirements relating to the location of the “link company” for consortium claims to group relief.
Detail of the clauses published today can be found in the “Overview of Legislation in Draft” document, which also includes tax information impact notes for each measure. All publications will be available on the gov.uk website.