The equivalence of variable separation solutions based on the improved tanh-function method (ITM) for nonlinear models is illustrated. As an example, we restudy the (2+1)-dimensional generalised NizhnikNovikov-Veselov system via the ITM. Based on the radical sign-combined ansatz, five types of variable separation solutions are obtained. By careful analysis, we prove that these seemingly independent variable separation solutions actually depend on each other.