OTS reviews 'making good progress'

25 October 2010

Issue: 4279 / Categories: News , Anish Mehta , Bauer & Cottrell , BDO , Caroline Turnbull-Hall , Deloitte , Jeremy Sherwood , John Whiting , Kate Cottrell , Office of Tax Simplification , OTS , Partha Ray , PricewaterhouseCoopers , PwC , Thomas Byng , Tunde Ojetola

Office recruits quartet of private sector advisors

The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has added four private-sector tax experts to its team of advisors, and says it is 'making good progress' in its first two reviews into simplifying the UK's tax system.

The new recruits are Thomas Byng of Deloitte, Kate Cottrell from Bauer & Cottrell, Partha Ray of BDO and Caroline Turnbull-Hall from PricewaterhouseCoopers. They join the Treasury’s Jeremy Sherwood and Anish Mehta, and Tunde Ojetola of HMRC.

‘I am delighted to have such an experienced team with a wide range of tax backgrounds,’ said the OTS’s tax director, John Whiting. ‘We are now getting going on our challenging task of helping to simplify Britain’s tax system.’

As announced in the summer, the office is carrying out two initial reviews: one of all tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions, and another centring on small business taxation.

The OTS will publish a full list of HMRC’s tax reliefs in early November, together with the proposed review criteria. The first report on the reliefs is expected to be published shortly after.

An interim report on the small business tax simplification is due by Budget 2011. Following meetings with industry groups and tax experts, a nationwide series of roadshows is set to begin next month, when the OTS team will seek views and ideas on where exactly the tax system is most complex and burdensome for small firms.