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Pensioner taxation and employee share schemes are to be the focus of two new reviews by the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS).
The agreed terms of reference for the projects, together with those for the next stage of the OTS’s existing scrutiny of small business taxation, are included in a letter, published today, from Exchequer secretary, David Gauke.
The review of pensioner taxation will gather evidence from pensioner groups and other interested parties, to identify and examine the parts of the system that cause taxpayers the most difficulties. It will also look at how problems vary across the pensioner population; improve to the situation will then be proposed.
The initiative covering employee share schemes will initially examine the four tax-advantaged, or government-approved, ser-ups, to identify where they are complex and place unnecessary administrative burdens on users. The OTS will suggest ways the schemes could be simplified, and then go on to look at unapproved share schemes in 2012.
David Gauke said. ‘The tax system [the current administration] inherited was a spaghetti bowl of reliefs and exemptions that pensioners and small businesses find particularly hard to navigate.’
The tax director of the OTS, John Whiting, welcomed the minister’s endorsement of ‘what will be a challenging and wide-ranging mix of projects for the OTS in its second year’.
