This week's opinion: 19 December 2019

For the first time in its history, Taxation magazine will have gone through a complete year without reporting on a Budget. 

This is not, of course, an oversight on our part: the calling of the general election overtook the planned 6 November speech. We have to go back a very long time to find a previous Budget-free year. Because the term Budget only gradually came into use there is some controversy over when the last such empty year was: it certainly was in the 18th century, well before the introduction of income tax.

We seem to have coped reasonably well without a Budget this year, which does lead me to wonder whether we need one in the future. I am being frivolous – the government clearly does need to set out plans for income and expenditure. But do we really need the theatre of the Budget speech and, more importantly, the inevitable raft of legislation that comes with it? Because income tax technically needs to be reintroduced every year there has to be some sort of Act. This gives the government the irresistible temptation to bulk it out with other measures for which there often seems to be no pressing need. So perhaps we could move away from the annual cycle, with the government introducing new tax legislation only when there is an actual need for it.

Change is good for the publishing industry, so there is probably an element of turkeys voting for an early Christmas in this suggestion, but there is a serious point here. Let’s not have new legislation purely for its own sake.