I noted a report today that said:

The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has announced the recruitment of four private sector tax experts to help with its review of small business taxation in the UK.

Joining the existing members of the panel will be former HM Revenue & Customs officer and IR35 expert Kate Cottrell and Deloitte senior manager Thomas Byng.

BDO senior tax manager Partha Ray and PwC senior manager Caroline Turnbull-Hall will also help the OTS carry out its review, which will see the controversial IR35 tax legislation placed under the microscope.

Commenting on the appointments, John Whiting, tax director for the OTS, said: "I am delighted to have such an experienced team with their wide range of tax backgrounds in place and I am very grateful to the firms that have released them. "We are now getting going on our challenging task of helping to simplify Britain's tax system."

And I thought “what the heck do this lot know about small business tax?”

Come on — who are they kidding? Deloitte, PWC and BDO are going to think about small business tax. When they have not one typical small business client between them, I suspect. What a farce.

Why not ask some small business experts to help. Wouldn’t that have made sense? To anyone but the Big 4 (who think BDO are small) of course it would. But to a PWC dominated exercise it’s anathema. So expect a complete cock-up as a result.