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05 December 2017

UK publishes Winter Finance Bill and consultations: Business tax measures

Executive summary

On 1 December 2017, the United Kingdom (UK) Government published the Winter Finance Bill, being the first Bill in a new legislative timetable that should see it enacted (and become Finance Act 2018) before the start of the next tax year in April 2018.

2017 has been a particularly busy year for UK Finance Bills. The final Bill in the "old" timetable was published in March (and enacted in April), but most of its provisions were withdrawn due to the snap General Election and reintroduced in the Autumn Finance Bill in September (which was enacted in November). The 1 December Bill is therefore the third to be published this calendar year.

Which is not to say it is particularly small. With 192 pages it covers 48 measures, and brings the total amount of Finance Bill legislation introduced this year to a record of over 1,000 pages.

The official title of the Bill is also confusing. With the announcement of a two-year parliamentary session earlier this year (in order to reduce parliamentary administration to prepare for Brexit), the Finance Bill published on 1 December is officially Finance (No 2) Bill 2017-19 (the Autumn Finance Bill having officially been the first Finance Bill of 2017-19), though the Autumn Budget documents refer to it as Finance Bill 2017-18. For ease, this Alert will continue to refer to it as the Winter Finance Bill.

It is important to note that the provisions within the Winter Finance Bill have been previously announced. In addition, 1 December saw the publication of 7 new consultations and responses to 11 previous consultations, noted in this Alert.

See the PDF file for a detailed discussion of the Winter Finance Bill business measures.

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CONTACTS

For additional information with respect to this Alert, please contact the following:

Ernst & Young LLP (United Kingdom), London

  • Claire Hooper
    chooper@uk.ey.com

Ernst & Young LLP, UK Tax Desk, New York

  • James A. Taylor
    james.taylor1@ey.com

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ATTACHMENT

PDF version of this Tax Alert

Document ID: 2017-5000

 
 

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