Says it all, really. Her Majesty’s Treasury informs us that
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) is carrying out a review into all tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions, for businesses and individuals, across all the taxes administered by HM Revenue & Customs. The Chancellor has asked the OTS to identify reliefs that should be simplified or repealed to help achieve a simpler tax system.
As the first step of the review process, on 08 November 2010 the OTS published a complete list of tax reliefs and the approach that will be used for the Review. The list is the first time all tax reliefs administered by HM Revenue and Customs have been compiled and made available in a single document.
And here it is. All 349 kilobytes of it.
All good citizens will be happy to learn that “Expenditure incurred with regard to safety precautions at a sports ground is eligible for capital allowances.” (No. 530), although perhaps approval will be less enthusiastic for No. 603, “International organisations and their staffs are exempt from specified taxes.” It is a burden off my mind to discover in the form of No. 673 that “Suggestion awards made by employees which do not exceed £25 are exempt from income tax.” – although one might suggest that the effort put forth by lawmakers to create and tax inspectors to administer this provision probably exceeds the benefit felt by the average taxpayer. In fact that conclusion might apply to most of No.s 1- 672 and 674 – 1042 as well.
why not just give all your wages to the government, anyway? Taxation always seem to keep rising, so it will eventually reach 100% at some date- why not now? you’d only spend the money on friviolities, such as food and clothing! The guvmint needs it for roads, and giving aid to foreign countries!
I ask you, which is more important?
I note there has been no parallel move to simplify taxes by simplifying and reducing the number of taxes themselves, narrowing their scope, making application more consistent, or diminishing compliance burdens. Rather the reverse.(Link)
They will possibly use this to remove as many tax reliefs as possible, thus disallowing a lot of legitimate business expenses being set against the tax now. That is, they will move the system towards income and business taxes being against turnover (revenue) rather than profit.
I am already seeing hints of this in advice from businesslink.gov.uk and HMRC with respect to my own small self-employment
That actually happened to Astrid Lindgren and caused Sweden’s Social Democrats to lose an election.
Anyone paid wholly from the public purse should not have to pay tax, adjust everyone’s wages accordingly and you can get rid of a whole bunch of pointless administration in between.