Yellow and Orange or Red and Green?
CCH: Tax Statutes and Statutory Instruments 2003-04
Price: Red volumes: £54.95, Green: £49.95, or £94.95 for all five volumes.
Consultant Editors: Ian Barlow and David Milne
Tolley’s Yellow and Orange Handbooks 2003-04
Price: Yellow volumes: £65.00, Orange: £58.95 no discount for buying all five
volumes.
Consultant Editor: Malcolm Gammie
Every tax practitioner needs to have access to the current tax legislation. The two
major tax publishers: Lexis Nexis (formally known as Butterworth Tolley) and CCH
go head to head to supply this market with what at first glance appears to be identical
copies of the same laws. However there are differences in both the presentation and
content. This review may help you decide between the bound paper versions of the
tax legislation. Both publishers do produce electronic versions as part of larger
electronic tax libraries but those products are not considered here.
The groans of the delivery man as he dumped the parcels on my doorstep tempted me
to start my review with a set of scales. So in the yellow corner we have the Tolley’s
direct tax legislation in four volumes straddling 155mm of shelf space and weighing
in at 4kg, and in the red corner CCH offer four volumes of direct tax law covering
175mm of bookshelf demanding extra muscle power at 5kg. The main difference is
that Tolley has included the Stamp Duties legislation in the orange or indirect tax
volume, while CCH bind Stamp Duty in with National Insurance, Tax Credits, and
PRT in the red volume 1D. The Tolley books also stand taller by 10mm than the CCH
volumes.
So much for the width, what about the quality?
The all new Income Tax Employment and Pensions Act 2003 (ITEPA) presented the
publishers with a problem. The Tax Law Rewrite team introduced 183 minor changes
to the legislation during the translation from the incomprehensible legalise contained
in ICTA 1888 etc., into the friendly plain English used in the new Act. These changes
are more than adequately explained in Annex 1 to the notes released with ITEPA, but
those extensive notes are not included with the published legislation by either
publisher, although they may be important to the reader. Where a section is affected
by a change Tolley gives the change number and a reference to the relevant paragraph
in Simon’s Direct Tax Service. CCH has been rather more helpful by providing a
summary of the relevant change to allow the reader to judge for himself whether he
needs to access a more detailed work for a deeper understanding.
Destination and origin tables for Tax Acts hold great fascination for tax anoraks like
myself, but they are also extremely useful for practitioners who suddenly have to
learn the new language of ITEPA 2003, just when they have mastered ICTA 1988.
Both Tolley and CCH give the origin or derivation of each section of ITEPA 2003 in
a footnote. However it is the destination table which a practitioner who is used to
turning to s. 198 ICTA 1988 needs to help him find the four or five new sections of
ITEPA 2003 that replace this well used section. CCH includes tables of origins and
destinations side by side for each recently consolidated Act in red volume 1A, but
Tolley hides its destination tables at the back of part 2 of the yellow volumes.
The use of cross references is another area where the publisher can add value for the
consumer. The new rewritten Acts: ITEPA 2003 and CAA 2001 are very good at
providing cross references within the text to other parts of the same Act, but within
the massive trawl-net that is the total UK tax legislation sections of other Acts will
also be relevant. For example in the footnote to s.336 ITEPA 2003: Deductions of
expenses: the general rule, CCH refer the reader to five remaining sections of ICTA
1988, but Tolley just point to just one paragraph of Simon’s Direct Tax Service.
The effective commencement date for changes in tax law is of vital importance to the
Tax Practitioner and this detail is provided in the history notes (CCH) or amendment
footnotes (Tolley) to each section. However Tolley have extracted a table of all those
sections that have been affected by retrospective legislation, and printed this table at
the beginning of the part 1 yellow volumes. This may be interesting to the tax
academics, but I don’t think it enhances the information already provided in the
footnotes.
It is in the area of Statutory Instruments and other extra-statutory material that
editorial decisions over what to include and how to index it can drive the biggest
wedge between the two publications.
Tolley publish both a chronological list and an alphabetical list of the published
Statutory Instruments in yellow volume part 2, while CCH only list the SIs by
publication date in red volume 1C. Personally I may be able to recall the topic of an
SI but not its number so I find the alphabetical list intrinsically more useful. Tolley
have also managed to pack in more SIs up to and including no. 2003/1831, while
CCH just cover up to no. 2003/282.
The calculation of business profits for tax purposes mus t start with a set of accounts
produced in accordance with generally accepted accounting practice (GAAP), which
means adhering to the relevant Accounting Standards in force. To help the accountant
check that the accounts in front of him live up to this standard CCH has included the
accounting standards that are used for determining profit or loss but have omitted
those standards that focus on presentational issues. Tolley leaves the question of
accounting standards to other works.
In truth most of the other extra-statutory material included in these volumes can
probably be found on the Internet somewhere, if you know where to look. But if you
are not adept at using search engines and cannot carry your internet connection round
with you the contents of Tolley part 2 yellow volume and CCH red volume 1C may
be your deciding factor, other than the price of-course.
Rebecca Cave FCA CTA MBA
Taxwriter Ltd
www.taxwriter.co.uk