I was pleased to read in the Evening Standard that David Cameron has promised that:“We are going to do a novel thing in this Government. We are going to plan properly, proper meetings, proper processes, proper Budgets.”I'm recording this here for posterity. In context the statement is a reaction to the furore about prospective changes to the CGT regime (about which I have commented previously on this blog).
If the coalition Government is serious about doing things properly it would mark a sea-change in approach as compared with the previous regime under Brown and then Darling.
So often tax changes announced in the Budgets in each of the last 13 years were ill thought through, ill-advised or simply headline grabbers that would add needless complications to the tax system. I have referenced some of the more recent and obvious examples on this blog over the last 3 years - see below.
Will the coalition government be able to avoid replicating this approach? I really hope so. I especially look forward to the Tories' promise being fulfilled to establish an Office of Tax Simplification.
Will it happen or is it simply words? Time will tell.
Previous relevant posts:
- Making Taxes Simpler
- Bank Payroll Tax - designed to create a pre-election distraction?
- Budget tax changes can't help self employed until 2012
- Why are capital gains taxed at less than half the main rate of income tax?
- VAT changes will HURT small businesses
- The tax simplification project is abandoned - not that it got very far
- "Policy by panic"
- Tax credits time bomb threatens to explode
I think the problem is that the exciting thing about being Chancellor is that you can pull rabbits out of the hat, and telling everyone and consulting and planning would spoil all that. As long as we all insist on treating the Budget as a sort of national sports day I think we'll have that problem !
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