Office for tax simplification

The Chancellor George Osborne and Exchequer Secretary David Gauke today established the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS).

The Chancellor has appointed a Board of tax experts who will be responsible for leading the work of the OTS over the next year. The Board Members are Michael Jack (Chairman) and John Whiting (Tax Director).

Their responsibilities will be to identify areas where complexities in the tax system for both businesses and individual taxpayers can be reduced and to publish their findings for the Chancellor to consider ahead of his Budget.

The OTS will undertake two initial reviews over the coming year. They will focus on tax reliefs and small business tax simplification (including IR35). The OTS will publish the initial findings from their work on reliefs in late autumn and on small business tax by the 2011 Budget.

The OTS will also draw on external expertise from the tax and legal profession over the coming months. These experts will focus on specific areas of complexity in the tax system and provide additional advice to the OTS.

The Government is committed to making the UK the most competitive country in the G20 and to reducing the complexity in the tax system. Over the past decade, the tax code doubled to more than 11,000 pages and the UK slipped from 7th to 13th in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index between 1997 and 2009-10. This trend needs to be reversed, and the OTS is an important part of making the tax system work better for the taxpayer.

Comment

This is to be welcomed (cautiously). However, this must not turn into an excuse to change the current system without proper debate.   The fact that the well respected John Whiting has such a prominent role will be of reassurance since he will be considered a steady hand at the tiller.

A lot of people will be watching eagerly to see what they have to say about IR35.

Update: a rather cynical view of this is expressed in this article in the Telegraph.  Note the stats about the increase in sheer volume in tax legislation that we’ve seen over the last few years.