ABSTRACT
We were set up as a Committee to make a study of the structure of the UK tax system as a whole. There is a widespread view, the justification for which we illustrate in Part Two of this Report, that, as a result of many successive independent changes and ad hoc modifications first of this tax and then of that tax, the whole system now contains a number of anomalous complications and inconsistencies, which have been much intensified by current rates of inflation. In present inflationary conditions and with the high rates of tax necessary to finance the present high levels of public expenditure, these anomalies can have very grave and important effects on the economy. Accordingly it was thought fit to set up a Committee to undertake a radical review of the tax structure as a whole.
