Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Nigel Mills

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

If we want a competitive corporate tax system, the tax rate is key. However, we probably need to examine four things, which include the tax base, as the hon. Gentleman said, and the complexity, stability and predictability of the system. We are in danger of just ticking the first box; I am not sure we are ticking the tax-base box well with this approach, and we are adding extra complexity. Many regimes around the world do not have capital allowances but do let businesses take the depreciation that they see in their accounts. That is a far more attractive, simple and predictable system, because businesses would not think, “I might invest in this piece of equipment, but they might reduce this to 15% in three years’ time and my relief suddenly starts to look different.” As the hon. Gentleman was trying to say, this involves a combination of things. We need to get not only the rate right, but the base and the underlying system right; we will not get all the advantages from simply reducing the rate.

However, for most businesses the first headline comparison is about the overall tax rate, so that is the main thing to focus on. I am not going to vote against this rate reduction. Paying for the reduced rate partly by reduced capital allowances is the right way to go in this financial situation, but we need to go in the direction of simplifying our incredibly complex corporate tax system. We can all work out the statistics by saying, “When I started work 13 years ago, my tax legislation was so big and when I left a year ago it was much bigger, and I have not even got the VAT and inheritance tax book.” We can look at how many schedules on income—actual capital—we have and consider how many of them we actually need. The capital allowance regime is part of that problem, because it was written 50 or 100 years ago, when it actually worked. A lot of these things are out of date, so we must look to simplify things if we want to ask businesses to invest. I am not sure that they are going to worry about whether something is at 18% or 20%, but they do want tax relief for their investment over the useful life of their asset provided in a way that is simple for them to manage. I am not sure that we are anywhere near providing that at the moment.

A lot of my clients use the capital allowances regime to add flexibility to how they get tax relief in the years when they have profits and in the right entities in which they have profits. They will not entirely welcome my idea of simplifying this system and taking all that away from them. However, if we are to get a modern, competitive corporate tax system, it must be simple and easy to understand. It must also do what we want it to do: incentivise the investment that we desperately need to have a growing economy.

[John McDonnell]

I have a fair amount of sympathy with the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), because if he ever wants to return to his former profession he may well find that he has lost a number of clients as a result of that speech.

The linkage between clauses 4 and 10 is inevitable, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said from the Front Bench, because the corporation tax reductions are being paid for by these cuts in capital allowances. I do not want to upset the consensus that has emerged on the cuts in corporation tax, but I do not support them and believe that they will be an error in the long run. I address the issue of capital allowances in that context.

I am unclear as to what the Government’s strategy is on stimulating the economy to tackle the recession in a way that rebalances the economy. I thought that this was not just going to be a rebalancing between the public and private sectors. I listened to some of the statements made by the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills about rebalancing the economy as between the finance sector and the manufacturing sector, which gained support across the House. We heard about the development of a manufacturing strategy that would enable us to have a balanced economy between the finance, manufacturing and service sectors, so that if there was a crisis in one sector, the whole economy would not collapse as a result of overdependence on that sector. However, these Budget measures seem to fly in the face of that balanced approach.

A number of methods can be used to re-stimulate the economy, one of which is tax cuts, including corporation tax cuts, as have been introduced in this Bill. Another method is the more directional approach of considering a form of tax cuts through the capital allowances, whereby the Government try to influence economic behaviour in a way they believe to be beneficial. The other method is to invest in largely capital expenditure through public services—I am talking about public investment.