Martin Wolf is unpersuaded that Eastern European experiments with a flat tax will work in Britain:
Every so often there comes before the public an idea that is simple, attractive and grossly oversold. Such an idea is the flat tax. But the discussion of the flat tax has one important virtue: it could force a debate on the shape of the tax system. The tax system that has evolved in the UK over the past one and a half decades is indeed too complex. It desperately needs reform.
Wolf goes on to point out that reducing tax rates and complexity are intellectually distinct from the flat tax itself. The new edition of Doing Business, which will be published next week, devotes a chapter to the level and complexity of taxes across the world.
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