Corporation Tax Operational Consultative Committee (CT OCC)

Minutes of meeting held on 17 October 2006 at 100 Parliament Street, London SW1A.

Present:
HMRC	Representative Bodies
Alex Hardaker - CT & VAT (Chair)	Sebastian Hordern (CBI )
Michael Christy - CT & VAT (Secretary)	Richard Baron (IOD)
Richard Harries – Large Business Service (LBS)	Chas Roy-Chowdhury (ACCA)
Steve Coad – CT & VAT	Colin Davis (CIOT)
Simon Habesch – Central Policy	Anita Monteith (ICAEW)

Introduction and apologies

1. 1. Welcome by Alex Hardaker. Donald Drysdale (ICAS) took part via telephone conference. Apologies were received from Mukesh Gunamal – ACCA, Derek Allen – ICAS, Jackie Latham (ICAEW), Carolyn Fisher (CBI), Lakshmi Narain (CIOT), Ruth Paynter – CT & VAT and Will Parker – CT & VAT

Matters arising from minutes of previous meeting (21 June 2006)

Clubs and Associations

2. HMRC confirmed that they have now published their administrative practice regarding clubs and associations on the HMRC website.

New Management Act

3. Work is currently under way to develop a New Management Act for the administration of taxes. The aim is to develop so far as possible a modern, simpler and more consistent legislative framework which is easier for taxpayers to understand and comply with and for HMRC to operate. On current plans, a Bill will be ready for introduction in the 2007-8 Parliamentary session.

4. HMRC gave a short presentation on the scope of the new act, which will cover the main taxes administered by HMRC including CTSA. The project team are reviewing generic areas such as registration, filing returns, assessments, claims and payments and repayments together with other administrative rules. They are supporting HMRC initiatives such as the HMRC Debt Management and Banking strategy and the Integrated Customer Management programme. In particular, they are involved in legislative changes necessary to allow tax appeals to operate within the reformed tax tribunals to be established by the Courts, Tribunals and Enforcement Bill currently before Parliament.

5. HMRC said that draft clauses would be published for public consultation very shortly and representatives were asked to participate in the consultation process.

Admin Burden

6. HMRC gave representatives copies of top 7 corporation tax admin burdens as identified by KPMG and invited Representatives views on other CT areas where they thought burdens might be alleviated. There was a brief discussion and HMRC said that it would welcome further written views from the Representatives by 30th November 06.

CIOT Issues

NAO Study and Progress

7. Representatives wanted to know more about the outcome of the NAO meeting with external stakeholders on their Value for Money studies. HMRC said that it will find out more information and will disseminate to the representatives.

Review of LBS

8. Representatives raised the issue of large business. HMRC said that since the merger of the two former departments they have appointed Client Relationship Managers who would have overall responsibility for both direct and indirect tax matter for an allocated large business. HMRC also said that they have published LBS Operating Model, ‘Working with Large Business’ on the HMRC website.

COP 10

9. There was a brief discussion regarding the COP 10 time limit in respect of trading status for the purposes of the Substantial Shareholdings Exemption.

CTSA in Practice

CT 600

10. HMRC said that both full and short version of the CT 600 company tax return form have been updated to include the 2006 budget changes and these are now available to order and can be downloaded from the HMRC website.

COTAX

11. HMRC confirmed that the necessary IT updates has been completed to process tax returns which are affected by the 2006 budget changes. However, the on-line system will not be ready until early December.

Leaflets

12. HMRC informed the representatives that currently they are in the process of updating all CT leaflets.

e-payment

13. HMRC said that following the Lord Carter’s proposal for e-payment, they are now working with the IT partner and also in the process of drafting the necessary legislation.

Aligning Filing Dates

14. HMRC said that an announcement will be made regarding this issue at the time of the Pre-Budget Report. HMRC have completed all the necessary review work and currently in the process of advising the Ministers regarding the options available. HMRC gave a brief outline of all the options available and said that the Ministers will make the final decision.

15. Prior to the meeting HMRC have issued a paper to all representatives, this paper contained a summary of the responses received by HMRC. There was a brief discussion regarding this paper.

16. Representatives said based on the options outlined it appears that HMRC was listening to the concerns raised by them. HMRC thanked representatives for their input into this matter.