Finance (No. 3) Bill

If we want a competitive corporate tax system, the tax rate is key. However, we probably need to examine four things, which include the tax base, as the hon. Gentleman said, and the complexity, stability and predictability of the system. We are in danger of just ticking the first box; I am not sure we are ticking the tax-base box well with this approach, and we are adding extra complexity. Many regimes around the world do not have capital allowances but do let businesses take the depreciation that they see in their accounts. That is a far more attractive, simple and predictable system, because businesses would not think, ““I might invest in this piece of equipment, but they might reduce this to 15% in three years' time and my relief suddenly starts to look different.”” As the hon. Gentleman was trying to say, this involves a combination of things. We need to get not only the rate right, but the base and the underlying system right; we will not get all the advantages from simply reducing the rate. However, for most businesses the first headline comparison is about the overall tax rate, so that is the main thing to focus on. I am not going to vote against this rate reduction. Paying for the reduced rate partly by reduced capital allowances is the right way to go in this financial situation, but we need to go in the direction of simplifying our incredibly complex corporate tax system. We can all work out the statistics by saying, ““When I started work 13 years ago, my tax legislation was so big and when I left a year ago it was much bigger, and I have not even got the VAT and inheritance tax book.”” We can look at how many schedules on income—actual capital—we have and consider how many of them we actually need. The capital allowance regime is part of that problem, because it was written 50 or 100 years ago, when it actually worked. A lot of these things are out of date, so we must look to simplify things if we want to ask businesses to invest. I am not sure that they are going to worry about whether something is at 18% or 20%, but they do want tax relief for their investment over the useful life of their asset provided in a way that is simple for them to manage. I am not sure that we are anywhere near providing that at the moment. A lot of my clients use the capital allowances regime to add flexibility to how they get tax relief in the years when they have profits and in the right entities in which they have profits. They will not entirely welcome my idea of simplifying this system and taking all that away from them. However, if we are to get a modern, competitive corporate tax system, it must be simple and easy to understand. It must also do what we want it to do: incentivise the investment that we desperately need to have a growing economy.