Change the Financial Year

C Johnson

Fiscal Studies, 1980, vol. 1, issue 3, 29-33

Abstract: This paper argues that the UK financial year (FY) should be moved from April-April to coincide with the calendar year (CY). A proposal to this effect was examined by a Select Committee on Procedure of the House of Commons in 1968. The Select Committee did not reach any decision on it. They published a 1965 Treasury Memorandum on the pros and cons. They heard evidence by Mr. Diamond, the then Chief Secretary of the Treasury, that no such change could be contemplated until 1972 at the earliest, in view of the decimalization of the currency scheduled for 1971. "At this stage the Government would certainly not wish to be involved in dealing with a problem of which, even if ultimately it were to be achieved, the transitional difficulties are very great indeed and involved very considerable additional manpower and problems of collecting tax and so on. The question you have raised of decimalization is merely relevant in the sense that any alteration of this kind must be regarded as for some period ahead, and as decimalization is due in 1971, it will be most unlikely tht one could cope with the re-organisation that would be involved before 1971. One would then have decimalization and therefore a new proposal for alternation would in any even, I should have thought, be incapable of being carried out until 1972 or so at the earliest." The Treasury gave arguments in favour of as well as against the change. But the short-run difficulties outweighed the loner-run advatages. The proposal has been effectively buried for over a decade.

Date: 1980
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