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Research from the TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) revealed that there has been no significant reduction in the costs of raising each pound of tax in Britain since 1958.
It said that HMRC has failed to collect tax more efficiently despite inventions such as the first handheld calculator in 1967; the microprocessor in 1971; Microsoft Windows in 1985; and the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Even after all these new time saving inventions the cost of collecting tax has only fallen by two per cent in just over 50 years.
It cost £1.16 to raise £100 in tax revenue in 1958, 50 years later it cost £1.14. It concluded that the UK’s tax system is far too complicated. It places a huge burden on families and businesses across the UK creating a costly tax bureaucracy. The costs of collecting tax in the UK in 2009 were substantially higher than other OECD nations.
Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said:"It’s staggering that we haven’t seen any real fall in the official estimate in the cost of collecting tax over half a century. With all the technological innovations in between, it’s hard to believe that HMRC’s work costs just as much as it did before even calculators were invented. The UK’s tax system is broken, and is just as burdensome for the taxman as it is for taxpayers.”
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Susie Hughes © Shout99 2012
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