The Tax Law Rewrite Project of

HM Revenue and Customs HM Revenue and Customs (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, or HMRC) is a non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial Departments of the United Kingdom Government, department of the His Majesty's Government, UK Government responsible fo ...

was a major effort to re-write the entire tax legislation of the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

in a format which is both more consistent and more understandable. It aimed to remove archaic language and impenetrable terminology from tax law and to replace it with modern language and terminology.

History

The project was set up in 1996 and produced five pieces of

primary legislation Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislature, legislative and executive (government), executive branches of ...

and one piece of

secondary legislation Primary legislation and secondary legislation (the latter also called delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) are two forms of law, created respectively by the legislative and executive branches of governments in representative democra ...

. A sixth and seventh bill went before Parliament. The project focussed purely on primary legislation but special dispensation was given to the re-writing of the regulations governing

PAYE A pay-as-you-earn tax (PAYE), or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) in Australia, is a withholding of taxes on income payments to employees. Amounts withheld are treated as advance payments of income tax due. They are refundable to the extent they exceed tax as ...

by the project. The project began its work with the legislation covering

capital allowance Capital allowances is the practice of allowing tax payers to get tax relief on capital expenditure by allowing it to be deducted against their annual taxable income. Generally, expenditure qualifying for capital allowances will be incurred on speci ...

s and the first legislation passed thanks to the project was the Capital Allowances Act 2001. The project then moved on to consider

income tax An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) in respect of the income or profits earned by them (commonly called taxable income). Income tax generally i