This week's opinion

The UK tax system doesn’t deal properly with small companies. The rules are written with large companies in mind and smaller companies (which are about 99% of the total) have to deal with them as best they can. Then there is the additional complexity of the interaction between corporate and personal taxes. The recent changes to dividend taxation are just one symptom of the problems that arise. So I welcome the Office of Tax Simplification’s renewed interest in this area (see left). We have been here before – small business taxation was one of the OTS’s initial projects. That produced some useful changes but its more ambitious proposals failed to find favour at the time.

Things have moved on. The OTS is now firmly established and is well respected within government. Simplification should underpin HMRC’s digital strategy and the time is ripe for a proper look at the whole...