How to make tax law. By Simon Sweetman
"Consultation – makes for better law, but the Treasury has shot first and asked questions afterwards..."
The announcement that the Chancellor will make his Budget speech on 12 March set me to thinking about the role of the Budget and its usefulness. It probably wasn't set up just to enable the newspapers to produce 12 page supplements demonstrating that you will be 67p a week worse off because of the Chancellor's machinations, and it's a scandal. Of course these days the posh papers will produce a 12 page supplement on the world conker championships if the advertisers are there.
Continued...
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You can speculate about the causes for this. ...
OK thanks :-)
I just wonder what the civil servant reponsible for taking Arctic to the House of Lords was thinking as he planned what to tell the Minister.
First draft "Sorry Minister, we obviously got this completely wrong. The tax payer had done nothing wrong and didn't owe us any money! Nor did the several hundred other small businesses we've bullied into paying up without going to court, on the same pretext. We'll obviously have to rethink our whole aggressive approach to small buisnesses now."
No, that won't do. How about:
"We've really been let down by the Courts this time Minister. Clearly there a massive loophole in the law that is allowing tax-avoiding scum to drain millions of pounds from the treasury. What can we do about it Minister? ... Legislate Minister? ... As soon as possible Minister? If you say so Minister, I'll put my draftsman on to it right away ..."
Easy come, easy go ...?
Maybe it's just me , but there is also the perception that tax revenues are being to some extent wasted on ill-conceived government schemes, which hardens resistance to taxation measures that appear unfair to the general public or the small business community without clout in Downing Street.
See also MPs' much-publicised transgressions are as nothing against the gross waste of public money on PFIs and consultancy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jan/30/immigrationpolicy.politics
PBR - a good thing or not?
I used to think the PBR was a good idea. Allow some time for consultation, fine tune the legislation, get everybody used to what's coming.
But in practice? Christmas / January is the worst possible time to be holding consultations and, as Simon rightly says, there's no time left for writing the legislation properly.
Maybe the budget and PBR should swap places. Float the proposals in March, pass the legislation in November. That would work MUCH better.