It enacts the 1998 Budget speech made by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

In the UK, the Chancellor delivers an annual Budget speech outlining changes in spending, tax and duty.

The respective year's Finance Act is the mechanism to enact the changes.

Notable changes in the 1998 Act included calculation changes to the taxable proportion of a capital gain by the replacement of indexation allowance with taper relief.

The Act announced the phasing out of Tax-Exempt Special Savings Accounts preventing new accounts being opened after 5 April 1999.