The Green Paper on Corporation Tax: A Review Article

Abstract

Few, if any, of the component parts of the British tax system could be regarded as being free of serious problems, but the UK corporation tax must be the tax which is most urgently in need of reform. It raises little revenue (mainstream corporation tax revenue contributed 3.2% of total Central Government tax receipts in 1981-82 according to the Budget estimates) but does so in an extraordinarily distortionary manner (see the article by Mayer (1982) in this issue of Fiscal Studies for details). The chaotic state of company taxation in the UK led to the promise of a Green Paper on the subject in Sir Geoffrey Howe's first Budget Statement in June 1979, and this long-awaited document was finally published in January 1982. The Green Paper contains a thorough discussion of the problems in the present corporation tax system and the possible directions of reform.