Compliance and enforcement

Once again, the Chancellor has announced that money will be raised by spending on investigations - £66 million to raise £1.6bn over the next three years. It is hard to predict whether the ordinary taxpayer will notice.

In VAT, unregistered businesses trading above the threshold which own up by September 2003 will not be charged penalties. However, they will still have to pay all the outstanding VAT in full.

Domicile and residence

As promised last year, the Revenue have published a review of the rules on the tax treatment of foreign domiciled and foreign resident people. Surprisingly, the document contains no specific proposals, but it does include a number of examples of anomalies that arise under the present rules. Presumably, the Revenue believe that a better system would deal with these anomalies, and proposals for change are likely to follow.