Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has carried out a distributional analysis in relation to Transferable Tax History; and if he will make a statement.

Transferable tax history (TTH) will allow companies selling North Sea oil and gas fields to transfer some of their tax payment history to the buyers of those fields. The buyers will then be able to set the costs of decommissioning the fields at the end of their lives against the transferred history, to the extent that the costs exceeds the profits made on the transferred assets.

The Government held a public consultation on the discussion paper entitled “Tax issues for late-life oil and gas” from 20 March to 30 June 2017. 7 of the 9 questions in this discussion paper concerned TTH. Subsequently it was announced at Autumn Budget 2017 that TTH would be available for transactions that received Oil and Gas Authority approval on or after 1 November 2018.

The draft TTH legislation was published for public consultation as part of the draft Finance Bill 2018-19 on 6 July 2018. This further technical consultation closed on 31 August 2018.

The Exchequer and economic impacts of Transferable Tax History are set out in the published tax information and impact note on the gov.uk website:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oil-and-gas-taxation-transferable-tax-history-and-retention-of-decommissioning-expenditure/oil-and-gas-taxation-transferable-tax-history-and-retention-of-decommissioning-expenditure