The pension tax reliefs that were very generous in the past have had to be removed.
In a rising market, it is all too easy to forget about tax reliefs, but they have now become vital.
If it were combined with an assault on other tax reliefs, then it would simplify a tax system that is groaning with complexity.
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If he wants to, however, he could increase the personal-tax burden without breaching his pledges by freezing personal allowances and scrapping tax reliefs.
"The government is committed to supporting these creative and dynamic sectors by introducing tax reliefs for these industries, " said Creative Industry Minister Ed Vaisey.
Small, targeted tax reliefs may strike voters as a piffling response.
One suggestion which the Government may wish to consider is to extend the principle, already adopted for stakeholder pensions, of giving tax credits rather than just tax reliefs.
The new body will initially conduct two reviews - the first looking at all 400 tax reliefs, allowances and exemptions in the system to see how they can be streamlined, and the second finding ways to simplify the tax system for small businesses, including finding a simpler alternative to the controversial IR35 code.
Self-assessment involves completing a tax return in order to tell the HMRC about income and capital gains - profits on the sale of certain assets - or to claim tax allowances or reliefs against your tax bill.
"We will reform the corporate tax system by simplifying reliefs and allowances, and tackling avoidance, in order to reduce headline rates, " said Mr Osborne.
Eventually ministers advanced a better case: that no one should be able to opt out of paying tax altogether, as unlimited reliefs currently allow.
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The Liberal Democrats also want to reduce the corporate-tax rate, paying for it by removing "complex reliefs".
Instead, the VAT holiday would be paid for by interest charged on the deferred tax, and the national-insurance cut would be funded by ditching various reliefs and allowances.
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