FST Victoria Atkins has dismissed recent calls by the Treasury Committee for a ‘comprehensive and systematic’ review of all tax reliefs, saying it would ‘impose significant uncertainty on the tax system, putting revenue at risk and altering business behaviour while waiting for a review to conclude.’
In response to related points made by the Treasury Committee in its review of tax reliefs, Atkins said: ‘Costing all tax reliefs is not possible without collecting significant additional data from taxpayers – putting considerable further administrative burdens on them and limiting our overall simplification and admin burden reduction efforts.’
In response to the Committee’s calls for tax reliefs to be classified as government expenditure, she said this was a matter for the Office for National Statistics rather than HM Treasury.
Dismissing calls for the government to institute a system of five-yearly reviews, incorporating public consultation, for all tax reliefs, Atkins said: ‘Any regular time-based assessment of whether reliefs should continue to exist creates inherent instability and uncertainty in the latter years of that cycle for all taxpayers claiming or considering claiming a relief inherent instability and uncertainty in the latter years of the cycle for all taxpayers claiming or considering claiming a relief.’
FST Victoria Atkins has dismissed recent calls by the Treasury Committee for a ‘comprehensive and systematic’ review of all tax reliefs, saying it would ‘impose significant uncertainty on the tax system, putting revenue at risk and altering business behaviour while waiting for a review to conclude.’
In response to related points made by the Treasury Committee in its review of tax reliefs, Atkins said: ‘Costing all tax reliefs is not possible without collecting significant additional data from taxpayers – putting considerable further administrative burdens on them and limiting our overall simplification and admin burden reduction efforts.’
In response to the Committee’s calls for tax reliefs to be classified as government expenditure, she said this was a matter for the Office for National Statistics rather than HM Treasury.
Dismissing calls for the government to institute a system of five-yearly reviews, incorporating public consultation, for all tax reliefs, Atkins said: ‘Any regular time-based assessment of whether reliefs should continue to exist creates inherent instability and uncertainty in the latter years of that cycle for all taxpayers claiming or considering claiming a relief inherent instability and uncertainty in the latter years of the cycle for all taxpayers claiming or considering claiming a relief.’
