Capital Allowances Act 2001 section 51N

Special provision for long chargeable periods: supplementary

Section 51N provides supplementary rules for allocating unused annual investment allowance (AIA) where a person controls multiple qualifying activities and more than one of those activities has a chargeable period longer than a year.

• This section applies where a person controls two or more qualifying activities in a tax year and more than one of those activities has a chargeable period exceeding twelve months.
• The long chargeable period rules under section 51M apply separately to each of the activities with a long chargeable period, allowing each to benefit from any unused AIA entitlement from previous tax years falling within that period.
• Where two or more of the long-period activities were related in a previous tax year, the unused allowance for that year is calculated on a pooled basis across those activities, and the total may then be allocated flexibly between them.
• However, the amount allocated to any single activity is capped at the maximum that the section 51M formula would give for that activity individually.