This week’s opinion

Of all of the countless thousands of words in the draft Finance Bill and associated documents the six which intrigued me most were these: “The savings nil rate is 0%.”

These are found in clause 1(3)(b) of the draft legislation bringing into effect the £5 000 dividend “exemption”. As we now know it is not an exemption at all but an amount which has to be brought into the tax computation albeit charged at 0%. The significance of this is that there may be knock-on effects elsewhere particularly at the boundaries between rates.

What interested me was the fact that the draftsman felt it necessary to define the nil rate as being 0%. Is this just belt and braces or is it in fact designed to give the chancellor the opportunity to change policy without needing to rewrite the whole of the legislation? You...