Corporation Tax Act 2009 section 330ZA

Debits referable to times before UK property business etc. carried on

Section 330ZA allows non-UK resident companies to obtain tax relief for loan relationship debits that arose before they started carrying on a UK property business, provided those debits fall within a seven-year lookback window.

• A non-UK resident company can bring pre-commencement loan relationship debits into account for the accounting period in which it starts its UK property business, as long as those debits arose no more than seven years before that start date and have not already been relieved for tax purposes.
• The relief is only available to the extent that the pre-commencement debits exceed any relevant credits on the same loan relationship — that is, credits that would similarly have been brought into account had the business been running during the pre-rental period and that have not otherwise been relieved.
• The relief is subject to the rules in section 327, which disallow imported losses, so companies cannot use this provision to bring in losses that originated outside the UK tax net in a way that circumvents those restrictions.
• The provision also covers non-UK resident companies that are party to a loan relationship for the purpose of generating other UK property income, not just those carrying on a UK property business in the strict sense.