The Government – By creating a complicated and opaque tax system the government is able to perpetuate a system of doublethink. By complicating tax beyond recognition with incentives and loopholes and credits and rebates, government is able to hide behind an impenetrable wall of words and numbers. A wall which will benefit it and those who can afford very expensive accountants.

Come Wednesday when the budget is announced (if there is anything left to announce by then), Captain Darling will without a doubt release a raft of new measures purporting to “lift the UK out of recession,” “help hard working families,” “relieve the burden on business,” etc. etc.

Herein lies the problem: how does anyone know what he is actually proposing?

The only way the vast majority of people are going to be able to understand what the budget means to them personally is: through media based punditry attempting to distill a few salient points from the dearth of information; or wait until their next pay cheque.

That is why I applaud the tax plans of Mssrs Clegg and Cable; whose tax plans are this:

1. Raise the bar at which we all begin to pay tax;
2. Close loopholes that help the richest avoid tax; and
3. That’s it.

These are tax proposals which everybody can understand.

Tax simplification is transparent taxation.

This is the democratisation of tax.