Inland Revenue Tax Law Rewrite

The Tax Law Rewrite project will rewrite all (or most) of the United Kingdom’s existing primary direct tax legislation in order to make it clearer and easier to use, without changing or making less certain its general effect.

Our work is organised on project lines and a separate project team has been set up. A drafting team, headed by a senior Parliamentary Counsel, works closely with four mixed discipline rewrite teams which are each responsible for a different area of legislation. As far as possible, we try to ensure that each rewrite team has Inland Revenue members with different backgrounds - tax inspectors, Revenue lawyers and those with tax policy experience - and also tax professionals from the private sector who provide vital input from an outside perspective.

We have considered both the structure of rewritten legislation and drafting techniques. The structure is examined on a lower level, which will make the rules easier to find and follow, and at a higher level, considering how best that legislation is divided into Acts.

Drafting techniques include a new, more logical structure for the legislation, the use of shorter sentences, plain language where possible, greater consistency in the use of definitions, and better signposting, together with the greater use of explanatory material.

The project will simplify the language and structure of tax legislation. In general we do not intend to change the underlying tax policy. However in the course of the rewrite there will be times when we can achieve further simplification by minor changes to the present rules, subject to the approval of Parliament. In other cases it will make sense to enact current extra statutory concessions or statements of practice and to discard obsolete provisions. In general such minor changes, which we call ‘’proposed rewrite changes’’ will be included in a rewrite Bill. But before any decisions are taken they will be flagged up clearly for full public consultation.

Having completed work on Capital Allowances (Capital Allowances Act 2001) we are now finalising certain employment income related legislation, for inclusion in a draft Bill to be presented to Parliament late in 2002.