Longer legislation written in plain English can be clearer and easier to use, and the length of the legislation does not generally add to complexity, the Office of Tax Simplification has found.
As Tax Journal reported in February, the OTS has been testing the belief that the UK tax code is the ‘longest in the world’.
In a paper posted last week on a new Tax complexity project page of the HM Treasury website, the OTS noted that a number of commentators used the size of Tolley's Yellow and Orange Tax Handbooks – or the equivalent CCH Green and Red Books – as ‘an exemplar’ for the length of the tax legislation.
‘However, this growth does not take into account the fact that both books include detailed footnotes to specific sections, repealed and revoked legislation and some of the rewritten legislation in its original form,’ the OTS said.
The Yellow and Orange handbooks are published by LexisNexis UK, the publisher of Tax Journal. The paper’s authors said their exercise could have been carried out using the CCH Red and Green Books, ‘giving similar results’.
The seven volumes making up the 2010/11 edition of Yellow and Orange (excluding Finance (No 3) Act 2010) contained 17,795 pages. Only 6,102 pages – or just over 34% – carried ‘actual substantive direct and indirect [primary and secondary] UK tax legislation’, the OTS said.
But this figure excludes lengthy legislation on national insurance contributions (approximately 550 pages) and tax credits (200 pages), as well as the non-statutory material. Finance Act 2011 ran to more than 400 pages, and the current Finance Bill has 686 pages.
Chris Jones, Tolley's Director of Tax, told Tax Journal: ‘The OTS raises a very valid point – it is true that length does not necessarily equate to complexity. However, all tax practitioners know from first hand experience that the UK tax code is complex.
Tax advisers should be aware of the non-statutory material in order to do their job to the highest standard possible, he said.
‘The OTS must be commended for the work they are doing to simplify the tax code. No doubt some of that work will extend the code but the goal must surely be a code that is easy to understand by tax professionals and where appropriate the public. That means it must be manageable and ultimately shorter.’
Longer legislation written in plain English can be clearer and easier to use, and the length of the legislation does not generally add to complexity, the Office of Tax Simplification has found.
As Tax Journal reported in February, the OTS has been testing the belief that the UK tax code is the ‘longest in the world’.
In a paper posted last week on a new Tax complexity project page of the HM Treasury website, the OTS noted that a number of commentators used the size of Tolley's Yellow and Orange Tax Handbooks – or the equivalent CCH Green and Red Books – as ‘an exemplar’ for the length of the tax legislation.
‘However, this growth does not take into account the fact that both books include detailed footnotes to specific sections, repealed and revoked legislation and some of the rewritten legislation in its original form,’ the OTS said.
The Yellow and Orange handbooks are published by LexisNexis UK, the publisher of Tax Journal. The paper’s authors said their exercise could have been carried out using the CCH Red and Green Books, ‘giving similar results’.
The seven volumes making up the 2010/11 edition of Yellow and Orange (excluding Finance (No 3) Act 2010) contained 17,795 pages. Only 6,102 pages – or just over 34% – carried ‘actual substantive direct and indirect [primary and secondary] UK tax legislation’, the OTS said.
But this figure excludes lengthy legislation on national insurance contributions (approximately 550 pages) and tax credits (200 pages), as well as the non-statutory material. Finance Act 2011 ran to more than 400 pages, and the current Finance Bill has 686 pages.
Chris Jones, Tolley's Director of Tax, told Tax Journal: ‘The OTS raises a very valid point – it is true that length does not necessarily equate to complexity. However, all tax practitioners know from first hand experience that the UK tax code is complex.
Tax advisers should be aware of the non-statutory material in order to do their job to the highest standard possible, he said.
‘The OTS must be commended for the work they are doing to simplify the tax code. No doubt some of that work will extend the code but the goal must surely be a code that is easy to understand by tax professionals and where appropriate the public. That means it must be manageable and ultimately shorter.’
