Now you see it, now you don’t

KEY POINTS

• Valuation of goodwill for tax purposes.
• HMRC attempts to prevent abuse of reliefs.
• Disappearance of free goodwill.
• HMRC Shares and Assets Valuation says it will continue to value goodwill.

It would be difficult to disagree with many of Philip Ridgway’s conclusions in his article “Digging up the playing field”. Having provided some generous tax reliefs when the intangibles reliefs were established in 2002 the government has now consigned them to the dustbin of history which brings us back to where we were.

Setting to one side the risible HMRC level playing field argument which Philip described what is to be made of the decision to abolish the amortisation of acquired goodwill for tax purposes? It is not inconceivable that this was a move driven by the frustration of HMRC attempting to...