UK Budget 2011 and Seafarers Allowance

225 wrote:

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the legislation could also include.....

... I just dont see this as revolutionary, out-the-box thinking....

Me neither. That would be taking the concept too far.

Member Joined: Jun 10, 2009

I'm sure we've all read Nautilus view on there website:

Nautilus welcomes the news that the seafarers’ income tax concessions and the UK tonnage tax scheme have emerged intact in this year’s Budget.
There were fears that both the Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction and the tonnage tax could be scrapped as a result of a wide-ranging Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) review of more than 1,000 tax reliefs and allowances. But the review concluded that both schemes are essential in helping British seafarers and UK ships to compete internationally and Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget package accepts the recommendations that they should be maintained.

Both tonnage tax and SED have been omitted from the list of more than 40 reliefs that the government will abolish in response to the OTS review.

However, the government has said it will consider the other issues raised in the report within a wider programme of work for the OTS. Details will be released by the Treasury before the summer.

Nautilus general secretary Mark Dickinson comments, ‘We are pleased that the representations we made to the OTS had an effect and the review accepted the strong case for maintaining SED and tonnage tax."We note that the Treasury is going to give more consideration to the OTS report and we will continue our lobbying to ensure that ministers do nothing that will damage the recruitment, retention and training of British seafarers,’ he add's

What they should do is scrap all the complicated 'this vessel does this and this vessel does that' rubbish and clearly define, in simple terms, a 'British seafarer'.

That's the key to this whole SED, who can claim or not, issue.

For example, faffing around with whether a boat can do 10kts or not, for the purposes of claiming SED, is not the solution.