UK now has 'longest tax code'

Britain has the longest national tax code in the world after 10 years with Gordon Brown as Chancellor - according to Tory shadow Paymaster General Mark Francois.

He said the 2007 budget takes the UK's tax legislation to just short of 10,000 pages, surpassing previous record holder India with just over 9,000.

Francois said: 'Under Gordon Brown we have finally become a world beater - but for the wrong reasons.

'Thanks to the Chancellor's obsession with complexity, Britain now has the world's longest tax code and this represents a significant burden with which our businesses and hard working families are struggling to comply.'

The claim is based on the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers 'Doing Business' which found last year that Britain had the second longest tax code among the world's top 20 economies, just behind India. Since then the UK added 1,600 pages while India added 262.

Further Reading:

Tax bible has doubled since 1997