Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Suella Braverman and Nigel Mills

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have to think about how to do the annual adjustments—they have to be made only once—if we move to a quarterly system. A lot of very small businesses are already on simplified accounting methods in any case, so perhaps those issues will not apply to that extent. The Minister reminded me that the Government have been trying to expand on those simplified accounting measures to make things easier for small businesses, and so I hope that some of those issues would not arise.

During the debate on my first Finance Bill as a Member of this House, one of my amendments sought to suggest that we move the corporation tax system much closer to the annual accounts that people submit, rather than having lots of different tax adjustments. Such an approach would be much clearer for business and would create big cost savings. With more of these things, perhaps I will eventually get to that dream I had nearly seven years ago, although I am not entirely optimistic about that. To be fair, we should welcome the fact that the Government have relaxed the timetable for businesses whose turnover is less than the VAT threshold. I welcome that and it has been largely welcomed by most small businesses in my constituency, which did have concerns about this.

As we are dealing with corporation tax and as I was talking about amendments I tabled to the first Finance Bill on which I served, let me say that one of my other amendments sought to allow groups to file one corporation tax return for their whole group, rather than having to file one for every individual entity and then making loads of complicated claims about how losses are moved around the group. This Bill contains restrictions on how many of the losses brought forward from previous years can be used, but we are allowing those losses now to be used right across the group, rather than just in the entity that originally made the loss. That is a welcome change.

As we leave the EU and can finally lay to bed all the worries we had about whether we would have to include all EU companies in a group tax return, if we had one, because it would be discriminatory under EU law to include only UK companies, perhaps now is the time to look, as many other countries have, into allowing groups of companies to file one tax return that shows the profit for the whole group and does not have to track every individual transaction between all the companies. That would help us to tackle some tax avoidance schemes that have played on the different treatment of transactions between companies. It would make it easier to comply and help to tackle avoidance so, as we move through the Brexit process, I hope we can look at those issues that we have previously found difficult.

[Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the cut in corporation tax from 19% to 17% in 2020 is only going to be good for the economy—the previous cut produced an increase in revenue from corporation tax—and will set Britain out as a favourable place for business and investment as we enter the next phase of our history through Brexit?

[Nigel Mills]

I absolutely agree: it is important that we continue to send the signal that Britain is a great place to do business and to invest. We want as much international investment here as we can get, so it is absolutely right to have a headline corporation tax rate that is as low as we can have it. I welcome the fact that we are going to get it down to 17%. The previous Chancellor hinted that he might have used 15% to give a sense of direction; perhaps the Government will look into using that in the manifesto we are about to produce.