Finance bill on the Internet

Specialist professional publisher Butterworths has expanded its online portfolio with a new finance bill tracking service, writes John Stokdyk.

As an extension of its Budget 98 service, the Butterworths website posted the contents of the finance bill the day after it was published. The site is updated regularly while the bill goes through its parliamentary readings and committee stages, said Nicole Johnson, managing editor of the tracking service.

Also included on the site are Inland Revenue briefs on the meaning of the bill’s clauses.

Access to the site is available for a #75 annual subscription, but the publisher said it was willing to negotiate prices with major firms who might have large numbers of users.

‘Many of the Big Six were doing this kind of work as a backroom function for their own purposes,’ said Johnson. ‘But all the crossing-out is time-consuming and difficult to populate across a firm. The beauty of our service is that it can make high quality information available in an online format in a very short time,’ she added.

Butterworths also runs a daily ‘webzine’ for lawyers, Law Direct, and maintains an archive of court reports going back to 1936. Law Direct costs #900 per year for up to four users and, said Johnson: ‘It is only a matter of time before we provide similar services for accountants.’