Treasury committee report on tax reliefs

The ‘huge and seemingly ever-expanding suite of tax reliefs’ is a major contributor to the complexity of the UK tax system. So concluded the parliamentary Treasury Committee in its recent review of tax reliefs (tinyurl.com/tax-reliefs-report).

Of course this is not exactly startling. The now defunct Office of Tax Simplification’s first report considered tax reliefs (March 2011) – and which the Treasury Committee mentioned found there were 1 042 reliefs allowances and exemptions – ‘far more’ than any of its initial estimates – and looked in detail at 155.

Distressingly perhaps far from finding fewer reliefs in 2023 the Treasury Committee heard there are 1 189 reliefs now in force – 147 more than in 2011 – and that is despite the government at the time abolishing a few reliefs. So much for simplification – it seems that governments simply cannot resist...