You read it here first

Well, okay, at the ippr, and it's been Ukip policy for a while, and Tim Worstall probably wrote about it too, and some other people have had the same idea. But (drumroll please):

National insurance and income tax should be merged, says chancellor's tax thinktank.

Office for Tax Simplification recommends radical structural change as distinction between national insurance and other levies becomes blurred (src)

Ooh, yes please. I did wonder about bunging a short position piece into the OTS asking them to consider scrapping NI, mostly for the reasons I gave a few days ago. Turns out I haven't had to bother!