On the good side, Chancellor Gordon Brown's budget means more work for lawyers.

On the bad side, partnerships face a tax on transferring property, reports Jeremy Fleming

Many experts agreed that Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown's eighth Budget was an important one for legal practitioners - impinging on tax solicitors' partnerships pay as well as the advice that they give.

Colin Ives, a director specialising in professional partnerships in the personal tax department of London accountants Smith & Williamson, said stamp duty amendments will have a significant impact on firms.

'Partners acquiring an interest in land from another partner will pay stamp duty on the value of the land acquired, though land valued below 150,000 will be nil-rated,' he explained.

Mr Ives said this would affect the numerous legal partnerships that own their property, or own it through nominated partners or through shell companies, since anti-avoidance measures will probably capture these as well.

Susan Crawford, a partner in the tax department of City firm Ashurst, said: 'There is a whole area of transferring property - including partnership property - into vehicles, and then transferring the interest in those vehicles.

Notwithstanding the Budget, these ideas should remain available.'

Either way, she said tax advisers would be looking for imaginative solutions to the problem.

Another key proposal in the Budget was the chancellor's suggestion that those who devise and market certain tax avoidance schemes could be required to disclose these in advance to the Inland Revenue.

Mr Ives said: 'For practitioners using tax schemes and marketing these to clients - employee benefit schemes are an example - this will put the Revenue on notice, should it decide that such a scheme is on the wrong side of the law.' This will result in more up-front costs, according to Mr Ives, as lawyers advise accountants keen to make their schemes watertight before submitting them to the Revenue.

He says that in the fine dividing line between tax evasion and avoidance, the Revenue is now essentially saying that not all avoidance is acceptable.

Ms Crawford welcomed the new scheme rules: 'Many of the schemes relied for their efficiency on hidden, subtle accounting issues - a bit like in the Enron case.'

She added that after accountants have formulated these schemes, 'we're often asked to review them for clients.

Sometimes, they rely on colourful and creative accounting, and we've felt uncomfortable about these schemes, so we think the new regime is good news'.

She agreed that there would probably be more work for lawyers as a result.

'There will be issues about whether a scheme is in fact a scheme,' she said.

'Accountants will carry on creating them but will want to make sure that they fall outside the definition of schemes.'

She said this type of work is as likely to involve corporate lawyers as those in tax departments.

Michael Hardwick, a tax partner at City firm Linklaters and chairman of the Law Society's tax law committee, said his understanding was that the schemes would initially be narrowly focused on those relating, for example, to employment products.

'But the Inland Revenue might look to extend this definition to cover all forms of tax-avoidance schemes - including those relating to capital allowances and property,' he said.

Mr Hardwick added that in addition to 'slowing down the wilder excesses of the industry' which create such schemes, getting used to the new rules would also be 'quite a long process'.

'It will take several months, because at the moment it is unclear what the barrier between legitimate and illegitimate tax planning will be.

Over time, it will become clear what is and isn't acceptable,' he suggested.

Other Budget measures to have caused a certain degree of consternation - according to Edward Troup, another member of the Society's tax law committee and a partner with City firm Simmons & Simmons - are anti-avoidance proposals for inheritance tax.

These are designed to prevent people from continuing to live in a property they have divested, and to charge them income tax on the benefit of living there.

Mr Troup said: 'As currently proposed, this measure is much too widely drafted and it will cause some considerable concern.'

He added that pensions practitioners would be keeping an eye out for the Finance Bill when it appears next month to check how proposals to change the pensions taxation arrangements - which will take up a hefty part of the Bill - have been drafted.

Another additional source of work stemming from the Budget, according to Mr Hardwick, will come from advising clients about changes to the government's proposed extension of transfer-pricing rules to UK companies.

At the moment, tax is levied on transactions between overseas group companies and UK group companies on the basis of arm's-length prices, while wholly domestic transactions are taxed on the basis of actual prices.

Mr Hardwick said the government has announced that it will tax domestic transactions on the basis of arm's-length prices in order to keep abreast of EU law.

He said: 'It will not result in additional tax for the Inland Revenue, but is bound to increase compliance costs.'

Mr Troup said that the merger of Customs & Excise and the Revenue set out in the Budget would be good news for practitioners, creating a 'one-stop shop which should be much more efficient for business'.

Mr Hardwick summed up: 'An important Budget, more so than for a number of years, and for tax departments it will be quite a bit of work, which can't be a bad thing.'