CIoT mounts attack on tax rewrite project
Tax experts say rewriting complex corporate tax law will encourage avoidance
Efforts by the government to rewrite complex corporate tax legislation in
plain English have been attacked by the CIoT, who have described the project as
risky.
The professional body says the rewrite will create new opportunities for
widespread avoidance and are calling on the government and HM Revenue &
Customs to scale back the project, the Financila Times reports.
‘We do not assert that legislation is perfect but this process can be
expected to worsen rather than improve it,’ the CIoT said, adding that the
project could ‘open opportunities for large-scale tax avoidance as well as
pitfalls for innocent taxpayers’.
The draft of the rewritten legislation was published on Friday and HMRC has
said that it is not realistic to stop or scale back the project at this stage.
The final version of the legislation is due in a year’s time.
The rewrite project was initiated by Kenneth Clarke, the then chancellor, in
1996.
HMRC maintains that the rewrite will save the department £25m a year as there
will be fewer misunderstandings.
Further reading:
Read
the draft legislation here