KEY POINTS
- What is the spirit of the law?
- Tax law does not always reflect Parliament’s intention.
- Limitations of the Finance Bill process.
- Create a non-partisan committee.
- The spirit of the law must be easy to follow.
The Banking Code of Practice refers to banks reaching a ‘reasonable view of the spirit of the law’ in order to comply with the code.
In the context of UK legislation generally and the loan relationship and derivative rules specifically this seems to be a fairly high hurdle.
This is notwithstanding the tax law rewrite process and the extensive examples of the spirit of the law given by HMRC in their consultation document of 29 June 2009.
The hurdle could be lowered by improving the way in which tax law is made.
This...
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