New corporate tax regime for intangible assets

Key points

• Commencement provisions for corporate intangibles are relaxed.
• Determining the related parties in a transaction.
• When is an asset created or acquired?
• The anti-avoidance legislation and the transitional rules.
• The practical effects of the Finance Bill 2020 changes.

Like many people in the world of tax I did not spend much time listening to the chancellor’s Budget speech on 11 March. Instead I went straight to the information on the HMRC and Treasury websites to get to the meat of the major announcements on tax. I was taken by surprise by the brief announcement that the commencement provisions for corporate intangibles were to be relaxed (tinyurl.com/y9eusfck). This meant that intangible fixed assets – intellectual property branding assets and the like...