Tax reform since the Commission on Taxation

Abstract

From an economic perspective the decade of the 1980s was characterised by worldwide tax reform. This movement can be understood when placed in the context of the widespread discontent that surrounded the prevailing tax systems1. Nominally progressive tax systems were widely perceived to be inefficient in their aliocative role and ineffective in their redistributive role. A myriad of tax deductions, tax allowances and tax reliefs, and the advantage that could easily be taken of them, encouraged substantial tax avoidance.