Legislation Day (L-Day), 18 July 2023, was the date when the government published the draft legislation for Finance Bill 2023-24. This Finance Bill will be colloquially referred to as Finance Bill 2024. Alongside the publication of the draft legislation the government published accompanying explanatory notes, tax information and impact notes on each measure.
There is a consultation on draft clauses that is intended to ensure that the legislation works as intended. The consultation will close on 12 September 2023.
The publication of the draft Finance Bill is in line with the current approach to tax whereby the government committed to publishing most tax legislation in draft for technical consultation before the legislation is laid before Parliament.
This Finance Bill will see the introduction of a number of measures including:
- Enterprise management incentives: extension of the time limit to submit a notification of a grant of options.
- Abolishing the pensions lifetime allowance.
- Pensions tax relief — amendments to the relief at source legislation.
- Corporation Tax draft legislation.
- Additional tax reliefs for research and development (R&D) intensive small and medium-sized enterprises and potential merged R&D scheme.
- Creative industry tax reliefs: administrative changes.
- Clarifications of the rules for cultural tax reliefs.
- Reform of audio-visual creative tax reliefs to expenditure credits.
- Increasing the capital allowance limits for leasing into tonnage tax.
- Changes to the geographical scope of agricultural property relief and woodlands relief for Inheritance Tax.
- Increasing the maximum prison term for tax fraud.