UK now has 'longest tax code'
Tories say finance bill psuehs Uk ahead of India in tax code stakes
Britain has the longest national tax code in the world after 10 years with
Gordon Brown as Chancellor – according to
Tory shadow Paymaster General Mark Francois.
He said the 2007 budget takes the UK’s tax legislation to just short of
10,000 pages, surpassing previous record holder India with just over 9,000.
Francois said: ‘Under Gordon
Brown we have finally become a world beater – but for the wrong reasons.
‘Thanks to the Chancellor’s obsession with complexity, Britain now has the
world’s longest tax code and this represents a significant burden with which our
businesses and hard working families are struggling to comply.’
The claim is based on the World Bank and
PricewaterhouseCoopers ‘Doing Business’ which
found last year that Britain had the second longest tax code among the world’s
top 20 economies, just behind India. Since then the UK added 1,600 pages while
India added 262.
Further Reading:
Tax
bible has doubled since 1997