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HMRC internal manual

Advance Tax Certainty Service

ATCS04580 - Advance Tax Certainty Service: Process: Scoping meeting and evaluation: Fiscal events

When the government is announcing changes to the tax system at the Budget or similar fiscal event, the contents of those announcements could be material to an issue being considered in a clearance. For this reason, ATCS will generally not issue clearances in the 3 weeks preceding, and in the 1 week following the fiscal event. This is to reduce the risk of clearances being issued and then being changed immediately afterwards because there has been an announcement of a change in the relevant legislation, and to preserve wider Budget confidentiality.

The government has committed to the principle of holding one major fiscal event per year, so we do not anticipate pausing the issuance of clearances more than once per year. We will discuss timelines for clearances that are expected to be issued close to a fiscal event with customers as part of any early engagement discussions.