The Finance Act 2018 has received Royal Assent

Two days after the Chancellor delivered his Spring Statement – and a week later than expected – the Finance Act 2018 received Royal Assent.

The Act, which started life as the Finance (No 2) Bill last December, is much shorter than its recent predecessors, running to a mere 193 pages. It implements the proposals in the Autumn Budget. The key changes to note are:

• The reforms to venture capital schemes (EIS, VCT and SEIS);
• The cessation of indexation relief for corporate capital gains from January 2018;
• The new SDLT relief for first time buyers of property valued up to £500,000;
• The introduction of the right to claim the transfer of the marriage allowance on behalf of deceased spouses and civil partners from 29 November 2017;
• The new higher diesel supplement for virtually all diesel cars from 2018/19;
• New rules that align the HMRC pension scheme tax registration process for Master Trust scheme with the Pension Regulator’s authorisation and supervision regime, recently amended by the Pension Schemes Act 2017.

As this Act started life as the third Finance Bill to come before Parliament in 2017, it is as well it was short. Somehow it seems unlikely that a precedent has been set.

Source: https://www.techlink.co.uk/