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The OTS announces its plans for the rest of this tax year
This week the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) announced its plans for the rest of the current tax year. It will continue its review of small business taxation and plans to review pensioner tax and share schemes (first the rules for approved scheme rules and then those for unapproved schemes). These are both areas that affect large numbers of taxpayers where the legislation is complex.
Since it was set up a year ago, the OTS has received many suggestions about areas of tax which should be simplified. So another project for this year is to work out where the really "intense" forms of complexity are in the tax system.
As a future project, the OTS wants to review the taxation of employee benefits and expenses generally. As this will be a huge project, they will scope this exercise in early 2012.
Few would argue with the aim of tax simplification and the OTS has certainly selected areas to focus on which could benefit from simplification. But is it biting off more than it can chew? It is taking on really difficult areas and it is doing this at a time when Government is introducing more complexity in the form of the disguised remuneration legislation.
The OTS is currently looking for a new Chair and new Tax Director and will be recruiting secondees to work on the pensioner tax and share schemes projects. The new team will have an interesting time ahead of them.
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29 June 2011
Author: Ashley Greenbank; Stephanie Tidball
