RELIEF FOR TAX- OR DUTY-PAID STOCK HELD AT COMMENCEMENT OF VAT (Hansard, 10 July 1973)

§ Mr. Higgins
I beg to move, Amendment No. 1, in page 4, line 40, after '1973', insert: 'or, with the sanction of the Commissioners, at a later date'.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)
With this amendment we are to take Government Amendment No. 2.

§ Mr. Higgins
The amendments relate to Clause 4 which, as it stands, makes no provision for the acceptance by Customs and Excise of a claim for rebate in respect of purchase tax and revenue duties received after 30th April 1973. The first amendment is designed to assist those traders who were unable to meet this time limit by enabling Customs and Excise to entertain bona fide claims received after that date.
The clause as it stands provides for the amount of the rebate claimed to be included in the claimant's return for the first VAT accounting period. As a consequence of the first amendment the second amendment is needed to allow a taxable person who claims rebate after 1446 30th April and has already made his first VAT return to include the amount claimed as deductible input tax in a subsequent return.
The House will be familiar with the point at issue here and would not wish me to expand it at great length.
It would have been possible to make this change on an extra-statutory basis, on the basis of a Treasury Minute dated 31st December 1897 and I understand that extra-statutory concessions have been made for much larger amounts, but it is right and proper that such a matter should appear in the Finance Bill and my right hon. Friend and my Treasury colleagues thought it right to bring this before the House at this stage.
The second point is one which I believe the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Joel Barnett) may be about to make, but this does not have the same effect as the Opposition amendment of 10th April which would have changed the deadline from the end of April to the end of June.
Because we have the appropriate date in the Bill, the vast majority of claims have come in, but in the circumstances, we have thought it right to make this change so that those who, for various reasons—illness and so on—have been unable to complete the returns on time will have them accepted by the Customs and Excise who will be scrutinising them carefully.

§ Mr. Joel Barnett
The Financial Secretary might have been a trifle more generous. He resisted our amendments which we tabled in order to help, particularly, small traders who had difficulty in submitting their returns, and who, I think he will find, are still having difficulties. He has now had to put down amendments. We understand the need for them, and I am only sorry that the Financial Secretary did not say that he had it in mind that he would need one day to come forward with these.
I have had brought to my attention the fact that some of those small traders, in particular, who made claims at the end of the first month for repayment of tax where the input exceeded the output on the first month, are still awaiting repayment.
1447 I do not know how prevalent this is, but I understand—and I will let the Financial Secretary have the details—that this is not uncommon. Can he give any information about how many are waiting for repayment of tax on claims submitted at the end of the first month?

§ Mr. Higgins
I hope the hon. Member appreciates that the effect of these amendments is not the same as the effect of those which he moved on the earlier occasion, not least because if his amendments had been accepted there would still have been a deadline at the end of June and there would still have been some people on the wrong side of the date. It is better to have a flexible approach of the kind we are now debating.
On the question he raised about repayment of tax, the bulk of claims correctly completed are now being paid within 14 days of receipt. If hon. Members have any cases of this not being so, I hope that they will let me know, but this is not a widespread situation.
Clearly, if there is some feature on the form which is wrong, there has to be some going back and forth while the matter is sorted out and there may be some delay, but it is not a general situation. If any hon. Member is aware of any undue delay, I should be glad to look at individual cases.
If the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton has such a case, if he would write to me, I shall look into it.