Ministers have today approved amendments to the tax avoidance disclosure rules to ensure lawyers and accountants operate on a level playing field and solicitors Legal Professional Privilege can be circumvented.
Accountancy Age, 06 Oct 2004
As revealed by Accountancy Age the Inland Revenue handed paymaster general Dawn Primarolo a draft Statutory Instrument late last week.
The implications would mean that the burden of disclosure will be handed to lawyer's clients or allow clients to waive their LPP and allow lawyers to disclose on their behalf.
Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, said: 'This sounds like good stuff to me, but should have been done from day one rather than going through the this whole debacle.'
He said the accountancy profession had had to 'fight every inch of the way' for the amendments to the rules that will ensure solicitors do not gain an unfair advantage over accountants in tax advice.
Disclosures will have to be made to the Revenue from 19 November, and the client would have to make the disclosure within five days of the first transaction which forms part of the scheme.
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