Journal :: Proposed Capital Gains Tax changes

Published: October 17, 2007
Author: Graham Dragon
Category: Tax
Permalink: Proposed Capital Gains Tax changes

Dear Fellow Adviser

I hope you enjoyed our e-mail on the pre-budget report and found it helpful.

My apologies for writing again so soon, but this is a matter arising from that report and I felt you might want to act on it now.

A major item we addressed was the impact the proposed changes would have on smaller business owners, particularly the effective tax hike on the sale of their business from 10% to 18%. In the last few days four petitions, each with slightly different wording, have appeared on the Prime Minister’s website deploring this proposal and asking him not to phase out taper relief. The largest, and earliest, of these petitions had already received over 10,000 votes at the time I wrote this e-mail and is very high profile on the site, appearing second by size in the Business and Industry section. But if we want the government to take notice we need to push the votes much higher than this.

Probably most of us with small business owner clients are unhappy with the proposed change. Now is our chance to do something about it. If the government sees an enormous groundswell of resistance to the change they may well have second thoughts and at least modify the proposal.

If you agree with this, then I recommend you visit http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SaveCGTrelief/, the original and also most popular of the four petitions, and add your name unless you have already done so.

Perhaps you do not believe this would make any difference. That could be a mistake. The government recently announced a U-turn on the proposed national road pricing scheme, and this scheme was opposed in an online petition with 1.8 million signatures.

It is a pity that there are four petitions rather than one, as this will dilute the response. Government policy is to reject additional petitions that are too similar to existing ones. I believe the other three would indeed be regarded as too similar, even though the wording is a little different, so anyone signing one of them is almost certainly wasting a vote. For your information, the later duplicate petitions are:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/EntrepreneurTax/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Business-Tax/
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/taper-relief/

You might also want to e-mail all your business clients, and any other clients who may be inclined to vote against these changes. If you wish to save time by cutting and pasting some of the above paragraphs into an e-mail to your clients you have my permission to “borrow??? my copyright for this purpose.

If you do not have clients likely to be disadvantaged by the proposed changes, or simply disagree with the position taken in the petition, please do not view this as an attempt pressure you. There is a wide diversity of views in this country on many topics, and one of the strengths of our political system is that we are all free to hold and express contrary views. But I felt that as many of you probably share the views expressed you might find this information on the petitions helpful.

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About Graham Dragon

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