Better
January 17, 2017Yesterday I was in London for the launch of the joint Chartered Institute of Taxation, Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Institute for Government report on improving tax policymaking.
The report, Better Budgets: Making tax policy better, is here. There are ten suggested steps towards making tax policy better, the first of which – moving from two to one fiscal event each year – has already been adopted.
There was an interesting discussion at the launch including a response from the FST and contributions from Andrew Tyrie from the Treasury Select Committee and Edward Troup from HMRC. There is even video – fortunately I was sitting out of sight of the cameras so it’s safe to watch!
The report is described as being the start of a conversation and I have some thoughts about that which I’ll put together later this week if I can. However the interesting part of the discussion yesterday was, for me, the comments Edward Troup made about widening the conversation. Because there was a feeling of familiarity about the collection of people in the room yesterday: I found I recognised a fair number of people and there was talk about “partnership” – between politicians and tax professionals – in making the Budget in future. And, yes, I was tweeting that this horrified me, because tax policy is too important to be left to the wizards. We need to bring the tax muggles on board too. I was charmed – and immensely pleased and relieved – to find Edward Troup arguing for the inclusion of the muggles too. Kudos!
tiintax 
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