Dead Wood

The Tories recently revealed their plans for removing the dead wood, and there is a lot of it, from the UK tax system during a lecture at the ICAEW headquarters in Moorgate.

Lord Howe together with George Osborne addressed an audience of the profession's leading tax figures, and explained how a Tory government would make the UK's tax framework simpler.

Lord Howe's report "Making Taxes Simpler", proposes that an Office of Tax Simplification would be set up to examine the existing tax code and make proposals.

A cross party committee would scrutinise government initiatives and proposals, and any changes to tax law would be flagged up to the public no later than the pre Budget report

However, he warned:

"It's going to be a very long haul."

George Osborne noted that "this complex and unwieldy piece of legislation provides a perfect lesson in how not to make tax policy."

It is at least a start that the opposition recognise that the tax system has become far too complex for both the taxpayers to understand, and for HMRC to administer (even if they were up to strength).

However, we are stuck with two more years of Brown. The future, for the medium term, is very bleak indeed for both the taxpayers and those who work in HMRC (who are also taxpayers as well).

As I have noted before, the most effective method of simplifying the tax system is to:

- cut out erroneous taxes such as CGT and IHT
- increase personal allowances to around £10K
- levy one rate of tax at 20%
- make up the shortfall in revenues via VAT

Bada Bing
Bada Bong!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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The full press release can be downloaded here.

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