Retrospective tax legislation

On 26 March HMRC republished the government’s Protocol on unscheduled announcements of changes in tax law first set out in Chapter 4 of HM Treasury’s paper Tackling tax avoidance published at Budget 2011.

The Protocol says that retrospective changes to the law will only be announced other than at Budget where an immediate change in the law is expected to prevent a significant loss to the Exchequer and significant new information has emerged to identify the risk or indicate its scale. Any such announcements will be put before Parliament in the form of Written Ministerial Statements before being published on HMRC’s website the same day. The relevant legislation to give the measure effect will then follow in the next available Finance Bill which could be several months later.