Non-dom regime

HMRC's consultation period for the proposed changes to the non-domiciled tax regime ended on Thursday 28 February 2008. It is now an ideal time to review the process.

The announcement in the Pre-Budget Report in October 2007 got matters under way. Since then we have had a consultation paper which was issued in December 2007 followed by draft tax legislation issued on 18 January 2008.

There is perhaps an argument for some of the tax laws affecting non-domiciliaries to be changed for a number of reasons. However for a significant area of law the processes have not been far short of chaos.

The initial draft legislation was poorly documented and linked into existing rules that implied that the taxation of gains in offshore trusts and companies would be retrospective.

This raised concern in the public domain and as a consequence press reports indicated that there would...