UK has longest tax code in the world

The UK's guide to tax codes has more than doubled in size since Labour came to power, on the back of a surge in legislation for new powers and anti-avoidance rules.



The 2009 edition of Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook has 11,520 pages, compared with just 4,998 pages in 1997, making the UK's tax code the longest in the world.



As a result, the task facing UK taxpayers and professionals of interpreting tax legislation "is more difficult than ever," said LexisNexis, which produces the book.



Its growth this year to four volumes, devoted to the UK's tax laws, will be defended by ministers as the state's necessary response to the economic downturn.



But insisting there was "little evidence" that tax legislation was abating, as Chancellor Alistair Darling motioned, LexisNexis said the recession was not the sole cause.



Group tax expert Mike Truman cited a "tremendous increase in the pages of legislation devoted to revenue powers and anti-avoidance," Accountancy Age reported.



Elsewhere, he spoke of a "desperate need to curb the temptation of all Chancellors to meddle with the tax system," and for them to focus instead on removing unnecessary complexity.



LexisNexis did acknowledge, however, that, to be authoritative, its 2009 edition features extra materials from HMRC and on EC legislation, which is "extensively annotated."



Yet the increase in its size to 11,520 pages, up from 10,134 pages last year, would have been even greater had Lexis not changed the page layout in 2007 to increase word capacity.



The publisher said: "With the longest tax code in the world and several recent Rewrite Acts to come to terms with, interpreting the legislation is more difficult than ever".