It was initially thought that Finance Bill 2017 was to be rushed through Parliament and the Bill subsequently did receive Royal Assent on 27th April. However, given that the Bill did not receive the same level of parliamentary and legislative scrutiny as previous Finance Bills, the Government decided to remove a number of key provisions from the Bill before it was enacted.

The key provisions dropped from what is now Finance Act 2017 are as follows:

• The new corporate interest restriction regime;
• Reform of the corporation tax losses rules;
• The new deemed domicile rules for income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax thresholds;
• Making Tax Digital;
• Reduction of the dividend nil rate to £2,000;
• New trading and property income allowances;
• The extension of cash accounting and simplified method for disallowing capital expenditure for unincorporated property businesses; and
• Reform of the substantial shareholding exemption;

Some of the items removed from the Bill (legislation on the new corporate interest restriction and corporation tax losses) were due to take effect from 1 April 2017. So what will happen to these?

During the parliamentary debate on the Bill the Financial Secretary to the Treasury commented that “there has been no policy change” and “the Government will legislate for the remaining provisions at the earliest opportunity, at the start of the new Parliament”.

Taking what happened after the 2015 General Election, this was followed by the Summer Budget in early July 2015 and a second Finance Act that received Royal Assent in November that year.

It therefore seems likely that many of the provisions dropped last week from Finance Bill 2017 will feature in any second Finance Act with many of the measures then having retrospective effect unless their commencement dates are changed. This assumes that the Conservative Party are successful in the June election. However, until any second Finance Bill is published, the position is currently uncertain.