With the government’s independent advisers pitching to move the end of the tax year, Neil MacGillivray considers how we wound up with the current tax year end date and challenges the new proposal…
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has announced that it's considering the possibility of moving the end of the tax year from 5 April to either 31 December or 31 March. It begs the question, why bother? After all, depending on whose interpretation you believe, it's worked well enough for at least 200 years. Many countries use the end of the calendar year or the last day of a particular month to end their tax year, so why did the UK choose 5 April? And after all this time, why change it now? To answer the first part, you must go back to 1582. At that time, Pope Gregory XIII conside...
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