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Spring 2006 Newsletter


Content

U-Turns Galore

Premises, Promises

Filing Bonus

RIP: 0% Rate

His and Hers

Party Spirit

State Of The Union

VAT's The Point?

Going Dutch

Away Win For Revenue

WIP-Round

The Best Land Plans

Tax Free Gizmos

Where Theres A Will

Do You Work Here?

Out Of The Shadows

Sacrifice Works

Home Sweet Office

Sauce For The Goose

Blissful Ignorance

PC Or Not PC?

Lost On Penalties

Worth The Paper

Carry The Can

The Best Land Plans


If you have a very long memory, you may recall DLT - not the disc-jockey, but Development Land Tax. This was invented in the 1970s to claw back some of the money that developers made from getting planning permission and changing the use of land. Something like it is coming back, and if you have some land you are thinking of exploiting, you need to know that. Just to make sure we are going forward and not just returning to old ideas, it will probably be called "planning gain supplement", but the basic idea is the same: an extra charge on developing land, over and above the CGT or income tax that you might pay anyway.

At this stage, the Government is just "consulting" about it. Given that they want the money and property developers seem a reasonably low-risk place to look for it, it's unlikely that the result of the consultation will be to forget about it. At least we are told it won't happen before 2008, so if you are about to start your project, you should be in the clear.

We'll keep you posted as the new rules become clearer.

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