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Anti-terrorism measures should be the focus of section 29 of the Capital Allowances Act 2001 - which ought to be re-drafted, not scrapped.
That's according to Alun Oliver, the MD of property tax specialists E3 Consulting, who has urged the Government to reconsider its proposal to drop tax relief on fire safety expenditure.
He said that businesses' expenditure on building alterations to make them more resistant to terror attacks should attract capital allowances relief.
Mr Oliver added such a modification of the Capital Allowances Act's clause 'would be more appropriate' than the planned April 2008 repeal, announced in last month's Pre-Budget Report.
His remarks came in response to the Government's highlighting of the fact that many public spaces and buildings may need to consider their ability to counter the threat of terrorist action.
And they were made at the same time as Taxation editor Mike Truman spoke out against the sort of tax measures, such as the one suggested by Alun Oliver, that have the potential to 'dramatically transform human behaviour'.
In his Phillip Hardman Memorial Lecture, Mike suggested that 'we can have a fair direct tax system that is also much simpler than the current one if we are prepared to accept that it should abandon most of its attempts to affect behaviour'.
