Sam Freedman and Judith Freedman
We have an extra bonus guest post this week from a very special guest.
We’re welcoming a third Freedman to Comment is Freed: Professor Judith Freedman, Emeritus Professor of Taxation Law and Policy at Oxford University, and also my Mum.
As well as her time at Oxford, where she was the first woman to be a statutory professor in the law faculty, she has held numerous roles in the tax policy world, including editing the British Tax Review, which she still does, and being a member of the IFS Council. She has advised the Treasury and HMRC over many years on tax avoidance and was also on the Board of the Office of Tax Simplifcation.
Professor Freedman / Mum has written for us on the challenges of making tax policy well given the politics, using October’s budget, and the various rows that have arisen since, as a case study.
In the UK (and we are not unique), circumstances have combined to make sensible tax reform a near impossibility. All attempts at change, however small, and however sensible, meet with outrage from the losers and their cheerleaders. During elections and, it appears, even when no election is pending, politicians fall into the trap of making promises that prevent rational developments. Opinion polls and protests take the place of debate and analysis. Research results and statistics are available but are not used as part of a holistic, cross government review and the consequences of tax change for other parts of the tax system and different areas of public policy, and vice versa, are often not properly considered.