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TAXline News: May 2020
Frank Haskew, Head of the Tax Faculty, reports on recent developments at the Tax Faculty during May 2020.
On 11 March 2020, new Chancellor Rishi Sunak held his first Budget. It included a number of measures to help deal with the growing threat to the UK economy caused by COVID-19. The Tax Faculty team produced a detailed report on the main measures in the Budget and followed it up on 13 March with a Budget webinar – my thanks are due to my fellow presenters Anita Monteith and Caroline Miskin. You can catch up with it by following the links to the Tax Faculty’s webinar page at the end of this page. The Finance Bill was published on 19 March 2020 and included most of the measures for which draft legislation was published in July 2019. We continue to welcome comments on the Bill.
In his Budget speech, the Chancellor made it clear that he would do whatever was necessary to address the economic threat caused by COVID-19. It did not take long before further measures were announced to try and steady the rapidly growing crisis. On 19 March we wrote to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to request a number of changes in response to the threat posed by COVID-19, including that all non-essential tax changes that were due to be introduced on 6 April 2020 should be delayed for a year.