Board minutes 17 November 2010

17 November 2010

Present

Rt Hon Michael Jack – Chairman
John Whiting – Tax Director
Edward Troup – HM Treasury
Dave Hartnett – HM Revenue & Customs

Secretariat

Jeremy Sherwood
Thomas Byng (item four only)

1. Minutes of the last meeting

The minutes of the 7 October meeting were formally agreed.

2. Updates since the last meeting

List of tax reliefs: The OTS list of 1042 tax reliefs was published on 8 November. The reception had been generally positive with some usefully constructive comments in the tax and accountancy media. Some useful feedback was starting to come in to the OTS inbox. The Chairman expressed his thanks to all those who had worked so hard in OTS and HMRC to collate the list.
Additional Board Members: At the previous meeting the Board had identified two people with a background in tax simplification and deregulation as possible additional Board members. However, as the OTS framework agreement limited the number of Board members to four, it was decided to co-opt the two additional members to the Board as advisors, rather than as full Board members.

3. Consultative committees

The consultative committees for the two reviews met for the first time on 3^rd November with good attendance and engagement; members’ names have already been published on the OTS website. The minutes were published on the internet. The Board considered a number of applications from individuals and groups to join the small business consultative committee. The Board thought that there was no representative on the committee from recruitment organisations or employers, so agreed to expand membership to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, who would be asked to nominate a named member for the Committee. Beyond that the Board felt the Committee was sufficiently representative. Other people who had asked to join the Committee could always feed in their views through existing members, or direct to the OTS e-mail address.

4. Tax reliefs review

The Board discussed plans for the interim report and agreed the broad direction it was taking. The aim was to test the proposed approach to the review on a small representative sample of reliefs. This would give the Consultative Committee and interested parties a chance to see the process in action, and feed back to the team in time to inform the final report.

On timing of the interim report, the Board recommended co-ordinating the publication date with other Government tax announcements around early December, including the draft Finance Bill and responses to a number of consultations.

Looking further ahead to the final report, it would be a challenge to review the full list of 1,042 reliefs in advance of Budget 2011. The Board considered possible approaches to prioritising the work, or grouping together similarly themed reliefs. We would also be seeking input from the Consultative Committee on this issue.

5. Small business tax review update

The OTS was holding a series of roadshows around the country in November and early December. The aim would be to gather evidence of where particular areas of the tax system were causing complexity. This would help inform where to prioritise the review. There were already some common themes emerging from early meetings, and the team would use this to help focus later meetings on more specific areas. Although the roadshows were mostly set up to focus on the small business review, some have been set up with the reliefs project in mind and all meetings will cover both projects as well as generally promoting the work of the OTS.

The Board asked the team to ensure they co-ordinated with existing Government work being carried out in the area of small business, for example the BIS-sponsored review into small business regulation, and the HMRC customer strategy for small and medium enterprises.

6. Date of next Board meetings

The Board agreed to meet next on 20 January and then on 23 February.