What better way to warm up a cold and damp start to the week than with a few comments about taxation from Mel Stride, financial secretary to the Treasury.
On the tax system and the changing face of business in the not too distant future, he says: “Who knows where it’ll end up.
“I’ve just had a very interesting discussion session with the All-Party Parliamentary group on tax and somebody said, ‘What’s the world of tax going to look like in 10 or 20 years’ time?’ And the honest answer to that is I haven’t got a clue.
Artificial intelligence and robots
“It might be all the companies being run by artificial intelligence and robots and driverless cars and in fact very few people working, and it’ll be thinking less about taxing things and more about how to distribute the wealth that’s being created in this extraordinarily different economy.
“So it’s a bit of a rollercoaster ride to try and work out exactly where its all going.”
On IR 35 going private: “We are going to consult on it and we will await to see what comes back from the consultation. What we do know is that the cost to the Treasury of people being non-compliant with IR35 is very significant, we think, in the private sector, certainly north of a million pounds in lost revenue.
It’s an issue of fairness
“So it’s an important thing. And once again, it’s an issue of fairness. We’ve already got it in the public sector and it seems to have worked well there. But we have an open mind and it’s certainly something we will be looking at the consultation responses very carefully on and not rush into any early judgments.”
And on MTD making life easier: “It should do, and that should be the test of it. There was a time we used quills and parchments and carrier pigeons and things, and I’m sure there were advantages to that but no one would seriously say we should carry on like that now. So I think we’ve got to leap into the 21st century.
Easier for the tax authorities
“But it’s got to work for businesses as well as for HMRC, and that’s the bit that I really get. It can’t just be something that makes life easier for the tax authorities or we collect more tax as a consequence.
“We’ve got to do that because we’ve got to eliminate error, its costing about £9billion per year, through people making oversights and filling things in incorrectly, we’ve got to try to squeeze that down. But equally it’s about making a much better experience and saving time for businesses, that’s really important.”
You can the read the excellent full interview by Alia Shoaib of Accountancy Age here…