New corporate tax regime for intangible assets

Like many people in the world of tax I did not spend much time listening to the chancellor’s Budget speech on 11 March. Instead I went straight to the information on the HMRC and Treasury websites to get to the meat of the major announcements on tax. I was taken by surprise by the brief announcement that the commencement provisions for corporate intangibles were to be relaxed (tinyurl.com/y9eusfck). This meant that intangible fixed assets – intellectual property branding assets and the like but not goodwill (unless within the FA 2019 regime) – acquired by a company from a related party on or after 1 July 2020 would potentially qualify for corporation tax relief for amortisation or impairment. This was particularly unexpected because there had been a major consultation on the...