ACCA condemns Chancellor's punitive approach to tax planning
Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
In response to the Chancellor’s announcement around tax planning, Chas Roy-Chowdhury, Head of Taxation at ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), said:
"Thousands of people are about to be hit with a massive tax bill which could go back as far as 10 years under plans announced by the Chancellor today. This is due to his retrospective measures to collect tax from those people who have entered into tax planning arrangements, irrespective of whether which are legitimate or not.
"This is a particularly punitive approach to tax which means that if a tax planning scheme is simply considered by HMRC to be similar to other schemes against which HMRC have obtained court decisions in favour of the tax authority, individuals will have to pay tax up front and only get it back if it later emerges the scheme does not break any rules.
"The problem with this approach is that people simply won’t have the money available to pay a tax bill going back as far as a decade that could actually turn out to be wrong."
