Friday 13 is perhaps not the most auspicious day to issue a consultation document but Friday 13 July was the day chosen to publish Delivering a cap on income tax relief: a technical consultation.
The proposal to cap some reliefs at the greater of £50 000 or 25% of an individual’s income was heralded in the Chancellor’s 2012 Budget speech (picking up on a theme from the March 2011 paper Tackling tax avoidance). While the charity sector executed some swift and effective lobbying to secure the complete removal of gift aid from the capping proposals the business and venture capital communities have been slow to react.
The consultation document sets out the policy objective: ‘This measure is about fairness: a tax system should provide relief to support those...