We have published a draft revised version of the short form tax warranties on a share sale: PLC standard document, Tax warranties: abridged short form version.

We have published these abridged short form tax warranties as a working draft at this stage and would very much appreciate your comments. To compare the new draft with the current PLC short form tax warranties, see Tax warranties: abridged short form version: mark-up showing changes from existing short form version. The short form tax warranties are an alternative to the standard long form tax warranties and require less disclosure on the part of the seller. They should be used in deals where there will be a tax covenant and due diligence has shown there to be good tax accounting records in place. The main changes we have made in the abridged version of the short form warranties are to remove some warranties which are unlikely to be relevant in a straightforward share sale (they can be found instead in Standard form, Tax warranties: long form version) and to shorten and clarify other warranties. Please send your comments to [email protected].

In due course, the abridged short form tax warranties will replace the existing standalone short form tax warranties (PLC standard document, Tax warranties: short form version) and will also replace the version of the tax warranties that appears in the PLC standard document, Share purchase agreement: short form: simultaneous exchange and completion. We also plan to add integrated drafting notes into the abridged version of the short form tax warranties. We will alert subscribers to these further changes when they are published.

For all PLC's resources relating to tax warranties and tax covenants on a share sale, see PLC Tax: tax covenants and tax warranties.