Who are the members of the forum of tax professionals?
Chris Sanger current Chair of the Tax Faculty and Francesca Lagerberg Chair from 2005 to 2007 are two of the members of the new tax professionals forum.
The other members of the forum are:
Malcolm Gammie QC
Vincent Oratore President of CIOT
Jane McCormick Head of CT at KPMG
Richard Stratton Chair of Law Society Tax Review Committee
Philip Baker QC
Stephen Herring Senior Tax Partner at BDO LLP
The first meeting of the forum is likely to take place in September 2010 and its remit and membership will be reviewed in two years time.
Background
On the day of the Emergency Budget, 22 June, the government published a discussion document Tax policy making: a new approach
The problem areas which the discussion document listed at paragraph 1.3 were:
- a lack of a clear strategy for the tax system;
- consulting too late in the policy development cycle;
- length and complexity of the tax code;
- uncertainty due to volume and timing of tax
- changes; and
- inadequate Parliamentary scrutiny of tax legislation.
In our Emergency Budget Commentary we noted:
‘We could not have summarised it better! That covers pretty much everything we have been saying for the last five years or more.’
At the very end of the discussion document there was a section about working with interested parties to develop and oversee the new approach.
One of the proposals was the setting up of a forum of tax professionals.
This forum is to meet bi-annually with Treasury Ministers and its initial task will be to:
- discuss the overall approach to tax policy setting; and
- drive forward implementation.