Income tax shall be charged for the year 1998-99, and for that year—
(a)the lower rate shall be 20 per cent.;
(b)the basic rate shall be 23 per cent.; and
(c)the higher rate shall be 40 per cent.
(1)In subsection (1)(c) of section 259 of the Taxes Act 1988 (additional relief for children in the case of a man with an incapacitated wife), for “man” and “wife” there shall be substituted, respectively, “individual” and “spouse”.
(2)In subsection (4) of that section (woman not entitled to relief in a case where a child is resident with her only while she is married and living with her husband), after “relief under this section” there shall be inserted “by virtue of subsection (1)(a) above”.
(3)In section 261A(3) of that Act (rule in the year of a separation for man who is entitled to relief by virtue of section 259(1)(c)), for “a man” there shall be substituted “an individual”.
(4)This section has effect for the year 1998-99 and subsequent years of assessment and shall be deemed to have had effect for the year 1997-98.
(1)The Taxes Act 1988 shall have effect for the year 1999-00 and subsequent years of assessment with the following amendments—
(a)in section 256(2)(a) of that Act (rate of reliefs given by way of income tax reduction under Chapter I of Part VII), for “15 per cent.” there shall be substituted “10 per cent.”; and
(b)in section 347B(5A)(a) of that Act (rate of relief for qualifying maintenance payments), for “the appropriate percentage” there shall be substituted “10 per cent.”.
(2)For the purposes only of applying section 257C of the Taxes Act 1988 (indexation) for the year 1999-00, the amounts specified for the year 1998-99 in subsections (2) and (3) of section 257A of that Act (married couple’s allowance for persons of 65 or more) shall be taken to have been £4,965 and £5,025, respectively.