In Parliament

British films

The cost of F (No 2) A 1997, s 48 film tax relief for the years 1997-98 to 2001-02 was £440 million, Dawn Primarolo said in response to a written question recently. The estimated costs for 2002-03 and 2003-04 are £300 million and £140 million respectively. The cost of other film tax reliefs is approximately £70 million a year.

(Hansard, 7 September 2004, Vol 424, No 128, col 1182W.)

Self assessment

The House of Lords had a discussion on self assessment and Internet filing recently. In particular, Lord Dubs asked why certain members of the Houses of Parliament were prevented from filing by Internet. Lord McIntosh of Haringey, the parliamentary under-secretary of state, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, said that 'there are special handling arrangements for those whose links with their employer apparently ought not to be disclosed for security reasons'. However, he said that the Revenue planned to make arrangements so that all members could file by Internet.

Baroness Noakes commented that recent public service agreements had contained no target for Internet filing, and speculated that this was because 'all the evidence points to the fact that these targets would simply not be met'.

Lord McIntosh said that the statistics showed that the number of Internet filers was increasing each year, and that he understood that 'Revenue targets have been met in previous years'.

Was the Revenue gaining or losing by self assessment asked Lord Mackie of Benshie. In reply, Lord McIntosh suggested that both taxpayers and the Revenue were gaining by self assessment. Taxpayers had 'less work to do' (an interesting notion, and one that most taxpayers would surely contest?). The Revenue gained because 'the costs are less'.

Moving on to the subject of enquiries, Lord Ezra suggested that the number of Revenue enquiries had increased, and wondered if this was due to the introduction of self assessment. Lord McIntosh said he would follow up this point, since he was unsure if more checks were made when there was a suspicion of a deliberate inaccuracy.

Finally, Lord Brook of Sutton Mandeville commended a novel system of self assessment. He said, 'When my late noble kinsman was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 50 years ago, he received a letter from an anonymous taxpayer. It said that he had been losing much sleep and had come to the conclusion that the loss of sleep was caused by his inaccurate tax reporting. He enclosed a banker's draft for £50,000 and added a postscript saying that if he continued to lose sleep, he would send some more.'

(Lords Hansard, 16 September 2004, cols 1293 to 1294.)

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