Treasury Committee Report on principles of taxation

The Treasury Committee into the principles of taxation has now published its report. In accordance with our usual practice, we will not be commenting in detail until we have had an opportunity to study it carefully and consider its implications. However, at first glance it appears to offer a good overview of tax principles, which we broadly accept. There are, however, in relation to those principles, yawning gaps that could easily have been filled by talking to people who knew about those areas of the topic. Yet even despite these shortcomings, anyone reading the document who possessed even a passing understanding of LVT would have realised that it would have put a tick in all of the Committee’s own boxes. For this reason alone, one recommendation should have been the setting up of a sub-committee to examine LVT thoroughly. Instead, LVT has just been dismissed on the basis of bald assertions unsupported by evidence, unexamined, and unquestioned.

The report is available for downloading from the link below.

Report of Treasury Committee into the principles of taxation