Finance Act 2000 received Royal Assent on 28 July 2000, before Parliament was adjourned for summer. The Act implements most of this year’s Budget’s provisions.

This is the longest Finance Act yet, exceeding previous long Acts by over 100 pages. It comprises 157 sections and 40 Schedules over 613 pages. It is the size of a telephone directory. No previous Finance Act has reached 500 pages. This brings the total tax law (allowing for deletions of old sections) to over 7,000 pages. At the start of the 20th century, tax law took up about 250 pages. The Act can be bought from HMSO for £41.

Yet again, professional bodies have criticised the needless complexity of tax law and the sheer bulk of it, including many pages of impenetrable prose.

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