The Finance (No. 2) Act 2005

received royal assent on 20 July 2005. This is the second finance Act of 2005 and was necessitated by the general election called earlier this year. Broadly, this second finance Act contains those parts of the first finance bill published on 24 March 2005 which were not eventually included in the Finance Act 2005 due to the shortage of time to consider the provisions in sufficient detail before the election was held. The Finance (No.2) Act 2005 largely contains anti-avoidance provisions which are in substantially the same form as those published originally on 26 May 2005. These are covered in more detail in PLC Legal update, New Finance Bill 2005 published.