HMRC’s decision to suspend their helpline will have involved much thought and some tricky trade-offs.
For HMT to reverse that decision today is not the way to run a tax administration.

telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/…

Halving the threshold would have been a better way to remove a barrier to growth.

Reintroducing indexation on CGT would certainly give a revived OTS some work to do. Some of the most complex and, ultimately ineffective, set of rules ever devised.

Hard to argue with this. CGT is a mess.

But half a century shows there is no right answer. CGT will always be a minority sport with fluctuating revenues.

Keep it simple, push up the rates, remove some reliefs. But devote real energy to the big taxes - IT, NICs, VAT.

TaxAid and Tax Help for Older People are the only charities providing specialist tax help for people across the UK and we need your support to continue to provide this unique service.

Please donate to our joint fundraising campaign at buff.ly/47CoiXH.

Thank you.

Good sense from Nick Macpherson.

As Lord Salisbury reputedly said, the best time to tax people is when they’re dead.

Great Financial Times piece today by Emma Agyemang and Chris Giles on how to manage public debt.
ft.com/content/b7b7a3…

Whatever your views on the overall level of tax, I argue that the tax burden must shift from younger to older generations.

GDP is 2% higher. So this year’s tax take is will be nearer 36% than 37% of GDP.

Good news: more scope for increasing taxes to fill the fiscal hole.

Bad news: tax collection is (even) less efficient than we’d thought.

Take your pick.

A payment due on all SPS consignments based on customs declarations.

Customs duty or user charge?

Any views, Office for National Statistics (ONS) ?

What matters is not tax simplification but good policy and good administration.

Tax policy is for ministers. But an external body could help improve tax administration.

instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/office…

LTA abolition will benefit better-off pensioners sitting on large pension pots.
Can’t really understand why it doesn’t cost more.
twitter.com/danbloom1/stat…

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
for those of you who want to learn more.

The risk scale HMRC apply for honours would not be a bad one for all public appointments.

HMRC's MoU on tax behaviours and the honours system is instructive. I rather assumed it applied to ministerial appointments too, especially those to HM Treasury.

Current tax treatment of pensions at death is simply scandalous. If you want to avoid inheritance tax then save in a pension and, if you’re rich enough, use other assets to live on. Pension pot is then passed on free of both IHT and, if you die before age 75, income tax.

Good sense from Ian Mulheirn, setting out the fundamentals of tax policy and neatly skewering the mindless mantra of “tax bad, tax cuts good”.

twitter.com/ianmulheirn/st…

Abandoning IR35 changes. Hurrah. A tax evaders charter costed at £2 billion is not going to happen

Sorry: *But* the ground has already been prepared on NICs

Using VAT to fill the hole is less anti-growth than a NICs rise. We purists would prefer it.

And the ground has already been prepared on NICs.

Completing a full u-turn on the mini-budget has a certain neatness, which the the markets might like.

Today is the 956th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings.

That didn’t go too well for the home team either.