Osborne kills off 43 types of tax relief from system
COMPLICATED and ineffective tax reliefs were struck off the government’s books yesterday as the chancellor committed to simplifying the tax regime.
George Osborne removed 43 types of tax relief from the system, such as the Millennium Gift Aid, which he pointed out “we won’t need for another 989 years”.
The moves, which come from recommendations made by the Office of Tax Simplification, will cut the UK’s tax code by 100 pages.
“Our purpose is not to increase taxes, it is to simplify them,” he said.
Osborne also proposed merging the two major taxes on salaries – national insurance and income tax – into one to “dramatically simplify” the system.
Operating them as separate taxes “imposes totally unnecessary costs and complexity on employers, ” he said.