Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988

8 General scheme of corporation tax

(1) Subject to any exceptions provided for by the Corporation Tax Acts, a company shall be chargeable to corporation tax on all its profits wherever arising.

(2) A company shall be chargeable to corporation tax on profits accruing for its benefit under any trust, or arising under any partnership, in any case in which it would be so chargeable if the profits accrued to it directly; and a company shall be chargeable to corporation tax on profits arising in the winding up of the company, but shall not otherwise be chargeable to corporation tax on profits accruing to it in a fiduciary or representative capacity except as respects its own beneficial interest (if any) in those profits.

(3) Corporation tax for any financial year shall be charged on profits arising in that year; but assessments to corporation tax shall be made on a company by reference to accounting periods, and the amount chargeable (after making all proper deductions) of the profits arising in an accounting period shall, where necessary, be apportioned between the financial years in which the accounting period falls.

In relation to accounting periods ending after such day, not being earlier than 31st March 1992, as the Treasury may by order appoint for the purposes of this subsection, this subsection shall have effect with the substitution for “assessments to corporation tax shall be made on a company” of “corporation tax shall be computed and chargeable (and any assessments shall accordingly be made)”.

(4) In any financial year assessments for accounting periods falling wholly or partly in that year or (subject to subsection (5) below) in the preceding year may, notwithstanding that corporation tax has not at the time been charged for the year in question, charge tax for so much of the period as falls within that year according to the rate of tax and the other rates and the fractions last fixed, but any such charge shall be subject to later adjustment, if need be, by discharge or repayment of tax or by a further assessment if for that year corporation tax is not charged by an Act of Parliament passed not later than 5th August next after the end of the year or is charged otherwise than as it has been assessed.

(5) Where the House of Commons passes a resolution for fixing the rate of corporation tax for any financial year or for altering the tax for any financial year, then any assessment to tax afterwards made by virtue of subsection (4) above may be made in accordance with the resolution; but no assessment made by virtue of that subsection later than 5th May next after the end of any financial year shall charge tax for that year, unless a resolution for charging corporation tax for that year has been so passed, nor shall any assessment be made by virtue of any such resolution later than the prescribed period from the date on which the resolution is passed.

(6) In subsection (5) above “the prescribed period” means—

(a) as respects a resolution passed in March or April in any year, a period beginning with the passing of the resolution and ending with 5th August in the same calendar year,

(b) as respects any other resolution, four months after the date on which the resolution is passed.