The non-domicile tax rules, which will receive Royal Assent today, are unworkable in their current form and should be subject to wider consultation before being introduced, Grant Thornton says.

Mike Warburton, Grant Thornton senior tax partner, said that, as preceding rules had been in place since 1799, a major overhaul should have been done to the legislation instead of rushing through changes in reaction to claims from shadow chancellor George Osborne that a Conservative government would raise £3bn in taxes from non-domiciled residents to ease inheritance tax and stamp duty burdens.
John Whiting, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) tax partner, said there was no clarification on how non-dom remittances will be treated for tax purposes. Nor was it clear whether there would be penalties for those unwittingly breaking the rules while issues were ironed out.

‘This is not the way to do tax legislation,’ Whiting said. ‘It needs proper consultation to make sure everybody knows how the rules are going to work before they come into effect.’

Further reading:

Treasury in row over £35k non-dom bill

Read The Daily Telegraph story