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Finance Bill

I declare my interest in today's proceedings on the Finance Bill, as shown in the Register of Members' Interests. I agree with the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban). His proposal is very sensible, given the speed with which the Government are trying to rush through the measure. Although I have a number of questions, I am glad that the Minister has already said that he will tell the House more about the definition of a large company, because that will be useful for our debate. Under the provisions, a company will have to notify Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs of the name of its senior accounting officer. I assume that it will also have to provide the company's address, but will it have to provide all the company's addresses for which the officer is responsible? Will he or she have to give their home address, as they will have some personal responsibility for what is discharged? Will the individual in question have to be resident—could they be a non-dom? These are important questions. HMRC does not require people to have DNA tests, but you never know. We have to be very careful when setting out what we want from senior accounting officers. We have already discussed subsidiaries, including overseas subsidiaries and those that are sometimes set up for particular financial transactions, such as the purchase of plant, and I think that there are difficulties involved in that. I also think that there are difficulties involved in the appointment of a new senior accounting officer. The first thing that he or she will have to do is go through all the accountancy procedures and conduct a risk analysis of every part of the business. In the case of large companies, that could not be done particularly quickly. We shall need to see HMRC guidance on what senior accounting officers have to do. We know that there will be penalties for inaccuracies, but it would be useful to be given a definition of what would be considered an inaccuracy. In any large organisation it is possible to make small mistakes involving minimal amounts of tax, and no sensible tax authority will take everything to the nearest penny. However, the individuals living under this regime will need to know about scale. In the case of large or significant tax liabilities, that would seem to be a sensible requirement. We are told that there will be a fine of £5,000 a company per year. If 20, 30, 50 or 150 companies were involved, could a multiple fine be imposed on a company and its subsidiaries, and could it be imposed over multiple years? What is the potential liability faced by individuals? As I said earlier, this is a bit different from limited liability. Could the fines be levied by HMRC, and is there an appeal process? According to the explanatory notes, a "reasonable excuse for…failure" will be accepted as a reason for HMRC not to levy fines, but we do not know how HMRC will be persuaded that an excuse was reasonable. There might be an argument between the tax authorities, which must discharge their responsibility to collect as much money as possible, and the company about what is reasonable. We need to know much more about the costs imposed on businesses. Even if the Minister qualifies what the impact assessment says about company size, I shall want to know whether the costs will be reduced for smaller companies. Will HMRC insist on the provisions applying to all limited companies at some point, and what impact would that have? We need much more information about clause 92. I think that it would be very useful if the amendment were accepted so that the implementation of the schedule could be delayed to allow proper consultation. It is important not to reduce the responsibilities of members of boards, and indeed those of auditors. My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham might agree that auditors quite often avoid their responsibilities nowadays, and that many of our financial problems might be caused by that. There are a great many questions to be answered. I hope that the Minister can reassure us and that, by the time the Public Bill Committee sits, we shall have much more published information so that we can test the Government's proposal. We know that it is important to raise legitimate tax from companies, and the American example might be a useful one, but I shall not be in favour of the proposed arrangement unless I am given a great deal more information about the impact on business and individuals, and about the Government's direction of travel.