The Chancellor has come under-fire following claims that the Treasury changed the timetable for tax changes to meet his borrowing target.
Philip Hammond was this week accused of shunting the introduction of a 30-day window for paying Capital Gains Tax (CGT) to 2020 in order to create a windfall to help with his figures for that financial year.
Prior to the change, the Government would have benefited from the change in 2019-20, the year that a new fiscal target was initially set to be applied.
But when the Treasury made the decision to delay the target until 2020-21, the CGT adjustment was apparently nudged back accordingly, seemingly to boost tax receipts for that year instead.
A report by Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee was highly critical of the change announced in the Autumn Budget, claiming that it was damaging to the Government’s credibility.
Mr Hammond hit back by suggesting that the adjustment was just “a timing issue.”
A Treasury spokesperson said: “The 30-day payment window is expected to increase taxpayer compliance, but it is right to allow people time to adjust to the changes to Capital Gains Tax before reducing the amount of time they have to make a payment.”