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Taxation of personal foreign dividend income and the impact on corporations

The government has today announced changes to the taxation of foreign dividend income for individuals. Under current rules individuals in receipt of UK dividends are entitled to a non payable tax credit of one ninth of the distribution. From 6 April 2008, individuals will also be entitled to a one ninth tax credit for dividends received from non UK resident companies, subject to certain conditions.

Under the proposed changes, an individual will also be entitled to a non payable tax credit if they own a portfolio holding (less than 10%) in the non UK resident company and the total amount of dividends received during the year from non UK-resident companies is less than £5,000.

Our view
The proposed changes should help to ease the difficulty for the retail shareholder base, where the dividend paying entity is no longer UK tax resident. This may assist currently UK tax resident companies in their commercial transactions, particularly in relation to cross border mergers and acquisitions.

The proposed changes appear consistent with the ECJ decisions in the Finnish Manninen and German Meilicke cases.