Personal allowances
21 April 2007 in Individual, International At first blush, the Income Tax Act 2007, which came into force on 6 April, restricts the availability of the personal allowance to those individuals who are resident in the UK, the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. The Act (section 56) makes no reference to citizens of the Commonwealth or the EEA.
However, the earlier applicable legislation (section 287 ICTA 1988) has not been wholly repealed by the rewritten 2007 Act. Section 278(2)(a) remains in force and the personal allowance does, therefore, continue to be available to Commonwealth citizens etc.
The availability of the allowance to citizens of the Commonwealth, but not to citizens elsewhere in the world, is discriminatory under the ECHR. For this provision to have been re-enacted in the 2007 Act would have led to a declaration of non compliance with the Human Rights Act. The offending legislation has, therefore, been left, as is, in the 1988 Act.
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