As reported here last month, this year's Finance Bill includes yet another set of amendments to FA 2004. The Bill had its Commons First Reading on 18 March. When Parliament resumes on 21 April after the Easter recess, it will quickly progress to Second Reading and then to the Committee stage on 28/29 April. Royal Assent is anticipated in the second half of July 2008.

In a departure from previous practice, earlier this year HMRC announced their intention to collaborate with stakeholders in future on developing significant guidance on planned legislation. In addition, HMRC promised to publish draft guidance alongside the Finance Bill, instead of it first appearing months after Royal Assent.

The aim is to develop guidance that is clearer and more helpful. To this end an 'eRoom' has been commissioned in the Shared Workspace. In theory, this will enable authorised persons to share comments on draft guidance. Aries responded immediately to an invitation to join, received on 14 February. Unfortunately, at the time of writing technical problems at HMRC have blocked us from collaborating , although a few people from other organisations have succeeded in overcoming all the hurdles. This may not surprise readers with experience of Online Services.

We are not entirely in the dark, however. HMRC have provided a snapshot of the guidance currently drafted on three of the pensions-related matters in the Bill:

• Investment Regulated Pension Schemes
• Protection of 25%+ lump sums
• Spreading of relief on indirect contributions

The final guidance related to the Bill is not expected to be published as an update to the RPSM before late September 2008 at the earliest.

New RPSM update

Meanwhile a major set of amendments to the RPSM has appeared this month, although the update has not yet been announced via a PTS Newsletter or the Pension Schemes What's New page. (This may be just as well: see below.)

The vast majority of the changes this time are simple corrections (about 65 of which stem from an errors & omissions report submitted by Aries on the previous tranche of amendments); many more we recognise from our ad hoc submissions to HMRC.

The update includes the latest changes to the Provision of Information Regulations (SI 2008/720: see Aries article). However these amendments to Scheme Administrator pages (in Chapter 12) were based on draft regulations and the statutory references still need updating. There is a lead time of around three weeks between finalisation of content for HMRC's website and actual publication.

For this reason this month's changes to the RPSM also do not include updates to reflect the change in basic rate tax from 22% to 20%. We understand the pages that need changing have been identified, but as the text had to be finalised for publication before the Budget it was deemed premature to include the changes. Another outstanding matter concerns amendments to guidance on the meaning of 'connected' due to changes made by ITA 2007 s.993. These have been withheld pending resolution within HMRC of a technical issue.