Office of Tax Simplification: Osborne's distant dream

A new Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) will tackle what the Chancellor described as a ‘spaghetti bowl of reliefs exemptions and allowances’.

George Osborne said he held a distant dream ‘that people might actually understand the tax laws that they’re being asked to comply with’.

The OTS’s first tasks will be to: 

• review all tax reliefs and identify those that should be repealed or simplified; and
• recommend ‘priority areas’ for simplification of small business tax. It will explore alternative legislative approaches to IR35 the intermediaries legislation.

The OTS will publish the initial findings from its work on reliefs in late autumn 2010 and on small business tax by Budget 2011.

David Gauke Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury said urgent action was required after ‘a decade of stealth taxes and hasty...