Gordon Brown Just Can't Resist Tinkering With The Tax Code

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

12 April 2004

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has earned his place in British political history as the Chancellor who has made the most changes to UK tax law, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

This rather dubious honour has been bestowed on Brown as he introduced a raft of new legislation and statutory instruments in the 2004 finance bill which runs to 600 pages over two volumes, containing 40 schedules and 209 clauses.

"This is the man who said in 1994, in a document entitled Tackling Tax Abuses: 'We shall also examine ways in which the tax system can be simplified... It is the complexity of the present system that has encouraged the growth of a flourishing avoidance industry.' It seems ironic to me," Grant Thornton director, Mike Warburton stated, according to the Telegraph.

One of the core tax initiatives contained in the finance bill is the setting up of a disclosure system whereby accountants, lawyers and other tax professionals will be required to inform the Inland Revenue of tax planning schemes they have sold to clients. In addition, firms that devise their own tax schemes in-house will have to include details of such schemes on their corporate income tax returns.

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