Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988

13 Small companies' relief

(1) Where in any accounting period the profits of a company resident in the United Kingdom do not exceed the lower relevant maximum amount, the company may claim that the corporation tax charged on its basic profits for that period shall be calculated as if the rate of corporation tax (instead of being the rate fixed for companies generally) were such lower rate (to be known as the “small companies' rate”) as Parliament may from time to time determine.

(2) Where in any accounting period the profits of any such company exceed the lower relevant maximum amount but do not exceed the upper relevant maximum amount, the company may claim that the corporation tax charged on its basic profits for that period shall be reduced by a sum equal to such fraction as Parliament may from time to time determine of the following amount—

where—

• M is the upper relevant maximum amount;

• P is the amount of the profits; and

• I is the amount of the basic profits.

(3) The lower and upper relevant maximum amounts mentioned above shall be determined as follows—

(a) where the company has no associated company in the accounting period, those amounts are £100,000 and £500,000 respectively;

(b) where the company has one or more associated companies in the accounting period, the lower relevant maximum amount is £100,000 divided by one plus the number of those associated companies, and the upper relevant maximum amount is £500,000 divided by one plus the number of those associated companies.

(4) In applying subsection (3) above to any accounting period of a company, an associated company which has not carried on any trade or business at any time in that accounting period (or, if an associated company during part only of that accounting period, at any time in that part of that accounting period) shall be disregarded and for the purposes of this section a company is to be treated as an “associated company” of another at a given time if at that time one of the two has control of the other or both are under the control of the same person or persons.

In this subsection “control” shall be construed in accordance with section 416.

(5) In determining how many associated companies a company has got in an accounting period or whether a company has an associated company in an accounting period, an associated company shall be counted even if it was an associated company for part only of the accounting period, and two or more associated companies shall be counted even if they were associated companies for different parts of the accounting period.

(6) For an accounting period of less than 12 months the relevant maximum amounts determined in accordance with subsection (3) above shall be proportionately reduced.

(7) For the purposes of this section the profits (but not the basic profits) of a company for an accounting period shall be taken to be the amount of its profits for that period on which corporation tax falls finally to be borne, with the addition of franked investment income other than franked investment income which the company (if a member of a group) receives from companies within the group; and for this purpose distributions received by the company from another are to be treated as coming from within the company’s group if, but only if, dividends so received are group income or would be group income if the companies so elected.

(8) For the purposes of this section the basic profits of a company for an accounting period shall be taken to be the amount of its profits for that period on which corporation tax falls finally to be borne.

(9) Any power which the inspector may exercise under paragraph 17 of Schedule 19 may be exercised by him for the purposes of this section.