Uncertain tax treatment: highlights from HMRC’s final guidance

On 25 February Finance Act 2022 received royal assent giving legal force to the uncertain tax treatment regime that has been in development for the past two years (FA 2022 s 96 and Sch 17). The regime applies to in-scope tax returns that are due to be filed from 1 April 2022 onwards. As a number of in-scope tax returns are filed 12 months after the period end this means that the regime has applied to treatments adopted by taxpayers for some time now.

Alongside enactment of the regime HMRC published its final guidance having briefly consulted on a near final draft during January. We discussed the initial draft of that guidance in this journal last autumn (‘HMRC’s draft guidance: adding further uncertainty to uncertain tax treatments’ ...