Election 8th June- Finance Bill 2017 chaos! What of the off payroll and OpRA rules ..
Susan Ball
Tax Partner, RSM UK | Employment Tax Specialist I NED I Diversity, Social Mobility & Neurodiversity Advocate l Diversity Power List 2023/24 I Past President Chartered Institute of Taxation I UN Women UK Delegate CSW68
The up and coming election is likely to have a big impact on the Finance Bill 2017 currently going through the parliament.
The second reading was on 18th April with what should then have been a normal progression through the houses and Royal assent in July. See https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/financeno2.html
But Parliament has to be dissolved 25 working days before Polling Day. This means that Parliament will be dissolved on Wednesday 3 May.
The House may Prorogue (suspend but not dissolve) before then. The Leader of the House indicated on 18 April that talks regarding prorogation will follow the motion passed yesterday.
Normally the House of Commons will spend most of a day (or more) on a stage of a bill. However, during the wash-up, when several bills need to be considered in two or three days this is not possible.
So this wash-up could occur next week and we will then know what happens or what is left of the Finance Bill 2017. At 762 pages the Finance Bill is currently the longest on record.
We have to hope that they decide there is only a need to pass a basic Finance Bill before the election, containing those measures essential to the current tax system and that most other measures are left out.
But they may not take that view for areas which came into force from 6th April 2017. So we are in real great danger of having the “off payroll in public sector” legislation and “Optional Remuneration (OpRA)” or salary exchange rules passed without any of the normal scrutiny, with no detailed guidance from HMRC and major areas of uncertainty.
Let's hope parliament does take a sensible approach and drops them until the post election Finance Bill giving time for the problem areas to be properly ironed out or if that is not possible moves the start date to 6th April 2018 to allow time for organisations to deal with the major changes and HMRC to issue detailed guidance rather than acting at in haste ….
Always on the go
7 年Will this see the end of contracting? I have already seen status updates of some of my connections leaving recruitment and taking up jobs in other sectors. I was expecting a huge influx of calls over the past few weeks from agencies because of people leaving the public sector due to IR35. As I can operate both Company and Umbrella. But this has not been the case. Yet my local job centre has seen an huge influx of new claimants that have been working in the NHS and local government claiming JSA. As sadly I too have been claiming JSA for over 8 weeks now.
UK Head of Architecture / Lead architect at AIG (Talbot underwriting)
7 年These are very worrying times, and with all the safeguards being distracted and reasoned thought being focused on the election we are in real danger of being left with difficult times for many areas of the population.
Cross Border Tax Risk, Global Internal Tax Group at EY
7 年Totally agree with this. The foreign pensions changes are another area where the draft law is wholly inadequate and we have the crazy situation where HMRC are still promising grandfathering for payments from EFRBS but it is not in the draft law.
Chief Financial Officer | Inflow Finance
7 年The off-payroll rule changes were chaotic already, and this will only make things worse. In addition, there's a real risk that the impact of those leaving the public sector will get lost in the noise around the election, or blamed on predecessors afterwards. This implementation and timetable was staggeringly badly thought out. I'm surprised there was a way to make the off-payroll shambles even worse, but this election is probably it.
Owner, ITContractor.com - Helping Freelancers Make the Right Choices Connect to get the latest important news and advice
7 年It'sa racing certainty that Hammond and May will re-instate the contractor National Insurance rise in he Autumn Budget - https://www.itcontractor.com/contractors-national-insurance-increase-back-agenda-new-election/