§ Mr. MacGregorI beg to move amendment No. 109, in page 172, line 20, leave out 'with' and insert
`on the first day or.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)With this it will be convenient to consider Government amendments Nos. 110, 111 and 112.
§ Mr. MacGregorSchedule 15 includes a set of rules that govern the amount of the annual allowance that is to be given to the vendor and purchaser when there is a sale or other transfer of the relevant interest in the agricultural or forestry land on which the qualifying building or works stand, but no election for a balancing adjustment is made. In cases of this kind, the purchaser takes over the balance of allowances to which the vendor would otherwise have been entitled.
Although the rules as presently drafted would be adequate to deal with many such sales or transfers, our attention has been drawn to the fact that the present wording will give rise to difficulty when, for example, one unincorporated farmer sells to another unincorporated farmer who has a different accounting date.
In such cases, the rules as they stand are not as clear as they might be on the amount of allowances which the two parties to the transaction should receive at the time of the change of ownership. An additional long-term effect could be that full relief for the original capital expenditure might not have been given to the purchaser by the end of the 25-year writing-down period.
This is an area of considerable technical difficulty, but we believe that the proposed amendments, although somewhat lengthy, will put matters right.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§
Amendments made: No. 110, in page 174 , leave out lines 11 to 16 and insert
'the former owner shall not be entitled to an allowance under this Schedule for any chargeable period of his after that related to the acquisition and the new owner shall be entitled to allowances under this Schedule for the chargeable period of his related to the acquisition and for subsequent chargeable periods falling within the writing-down period.
(1A) If, in a case falling within sub-paragraph (1) above, the date of the acquisition occurs during a chargeable period of the former owner or its basis period, he shall be entitled only to an appropriate portion of an allowance for the chargeable period related to the acquisition and, similarly, if the date of the acquisition occurs during a chargeable period of the new owner or its basis period, he shall be entitled only to an appropriate portion of an allowance for the chargeable period (of his) related to the acquisition'.
§ No. 111, in page 174, in line 18, leave out 'subparagraph (1) and insert 'sub-paragraphs (1) and (1A).
§
No. 112, in page 174, line 41, at end insert—
`(4A) If, by virtue only of the operation of the preceding provisions of this paragraph and, where appropriate, section 75(2) of the Capital Allowances Act 1968, the total allowances which, apart from this sub-paragraph, would fall to be made under this Schedule in respect of any expenditure during the writing-down period appropriate to it would be less than the amount of that expenditure, then, for the chargeable period in which that writing-down period ends, the allowance in respect of that expenditure shall be increased to such amount as will secure that the total of the allowances equals the amount of that expenditure'.—[Mr. MacGregor.]