One of the Truss Financial Event measures which has yet to be reversed is Kwasi’s abolition of the Office of Tax Simplification. That’s certainly not because it’s simple enough already, as we have one of the world’s most complex tax systems; not least because of successive governments’ ‘pledges’ not to increase the holy trinity of income tax, NI and VAT. As a result, all they can do to tinker around with what we already have, adding a knob here and a whistle there to bring in a few extra bob and hope that no-one notices. And so more and more layers of complexity are added, making the whole thing a nightmare to administer and our exams even more difficult (spare a thought!). Will anyone be brave enough to do some root and branch reform? Well, maybe someone with a big enough majority in parliament…
“Why people over the age of 55 are the new problem generation”
I suspect that many a ‘boomer’ might be pleased with the ‘problem generation’ label. When they were teen- or twenty-somethings, their parents’ generation may well have either despaired of them or worried about the world into which they were emerging as adults; it will ever be thus.