Tracking the Act

JOHN JEFFREY-COOK FCA, FTII, FCIS, ATT pinpoints the debates and amendments to this year's Finance Bill.

THIS YEAR'S FINANCE Act, with 143 sections and 40 Schedules, is the second longest ever at 501 pages. The longest was that of 2000, at 613 pages; before 2000 the record was held by that of 1994 at 463 pages.

At Committee stage, one new clause was added to the Bill: section 41, Parliamentary visits to EU candidate countries: tax treatment of members' expenses. 'Tax treatment' here is a euphemism for 'exemption', as the section is to benefit Members of Parliament; elsewhere, as in section 87, Finance Act 2000, tax treatment means how transactions are taxed.

At Report stage, original clause 98: Films: restriction of relief to films genuinely intended for theatrical release, was withdrawn and replaced by new clause 21, now section 99. Two new clauses and a new Schedule were added as follows:

 Although much of the Bill had commendably been exposed in draft, 90 amendments were made at Committee stage and 21 at Report stage.

Table 1 provides a complete history of every section and Schedule. Their numbers in the Act appear in the far right-hand column; the left-hand side shows the clause or Schedule number each started with, any amendments made, and the date and location of the Committee debates (if any) on each clause or Schedule. Thus section 41 started as new clause 21, added on 25 June with very little debate (columns 562, 563). Schedules 29 and 31 were amended at both stages.

Under Committee debates, W indicates sittings of the Whole House and numbers indicate sittings of Standing Committee F. The Report stage was on 3 July (columns 247 to 363) and 4 July (columns 413 to 502), when the Commons passed the Bill. It passed through all stages in the House of Lords on 12 July and received Royal Assent on 24 July.

Table 2 summarises the amendments and shows where each amendment appears in Simon's Weekly Tax Intelligence.

Tables for the Finance Act 2001 appeared in Taxation, 19 July 2001 at page 398, which refers to similar tables covering earlier years' Finance Acts.

For a review of the Bill see Taxation, 2 May 2002 at page 113.

John Jeffrey-Cook is a consulting editor to Butterworths' Encyclopaedia of Forms and Precedents.

Table 1: Amendments and debates

[See also Tax Direct Finance Bill Tracking Service]

Table 2: Summary of amendments

[See also Tax Direct Finance Bill Tracking Service]

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