Is there a tax avoidance magic money tree? | Tax Policy Associates
We now have enough information to be able to answer the question of whether Angela Rayner will be subject to HMRC penalties, and how large those penalties will be. For the reasons below, in my view Ms Rayner will very likely receive penalties for a “careless” error of around 20%. The background On the basis […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Last Tuesday, I awoke to an email from the High Court, rejecting an attempt to silence me with an interim injunction. This came as a surprise, because I’d no idea anyone had applied for an injunction. This was an “on notice” injunction application – but I had received no notice. What kind of lawyer would […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Every Monday morning, we publish an updated list of every PLC in the UK that has failed to file its accounts on time. Sometimes a company is on the list because of a Companies House delay/error. More often, it’s because the company is troubled, bust, or incompetent. And occasionally it reveals an active fraud. Despite […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Law firm Axiom Ince failed in October 2023, with £64m of client money missing – losses ultimately covered by the solicitors’ profession. How could the auditors have failed to notice £64m of missing money? The answer is that the company broke the law, and filed unaudited accounts. Axiom Ince’s accountants, Adrian C Mansbridge & Co, […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Government needs money. Council tax is regressive – high-value properties pay a trifling sum in comparison with their value. It must be tempting for Rachel Reeves to solve both problems in one go by raising council tax on high-value properties. We’ve created an interactive calculator that shows how this could be done, and how […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Reports suggest Labour may introduce capital gains tax on home sales in the Autumn Budget. It sounds like an easy revenue raiser – but the evidence shows it would slash transactions, gum up housing chains, and could even collect less tax overall. With stamp duty already doing huge damage, the last thing we should do […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
There has been a huge amount of controversy over the inheritance tax changes in last year’s Budget. They raised £500m, but hit some small farms and small businesses unfairly – whilst not stopping much existing inheritance tax avoidance. There’s a new proposal from CenTax which seems to do the impossible: protect small farms and businesses, […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has proposed large increases in gambling taxes to raise £3bn. The £3bn would be used to remove the two-child benefit limit and the household benefit, “lifting around half a million children out of poverty overnight”. However there’s a gap between how the proposal is being pitched – taxing […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
In July 2022, I wrote that I thought Nadhim Zahawi had lied about his taxes. I was right. Nadhim Zahawi lied repeatedly about his tax affairs, and continued to do so until it became public in January 2023 that – at the same time he was saying he’d always paid taxes in full – he […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Chancery Law & Tax is “one of the UK’s leading providers of Legal Services”. It appears to have no employees or directors with any legal or tax qualifications. It’s owned by a man called Tony Gimple. Mr Gimple’s previous firm, Less Tax for Landlords (aka the One Consultancy Group) promoted a landlord tax avoidance scheme. […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
As The Times has reported, there’s evidence that Dundee United claimed R&D tax relief for a quarter of its players’ wages. HMRC – and therefore all of us – may have subsidised the club’s wage bill. The Times‘ article was based on an R&D tax relief claim document we obtained – we’re publishing it in […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Henley & Partners’ 2025 Wealth Migration Report says 16,500 UK millionaires will leave this year. That’s a very small percentage, which is surprising when the OBR expected 25% of the wealthiest non-doms to leave the UK. And many private wealth industry figures have told us that many of the figures in the Henley & Partners reports don’t make […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
A UK wealth tax is often promoted as an easy revenue-raiser that would only affect the very rich. Our analysis finds the opposite: the revenue is highly uncertain, and would arrive only after years of complex implementation. Most importantly, the tax would lower long‑run growth and employment, thanks to a decline in foreign and domestic […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
In the past five years, 600,000 people who owe no tax have been charged HMRC late-filing penalties. The penalties start at £100, but can snowball into four- and five-figure debts: one woman with severe mental-health difficulties was pursued for £10,000; another was driven into bankruptcy. A system that was intended to encourage timely tax filing […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
One man has set up a series of fake banks on Companies House – with real bank names, no checks, and zero consequences. When he’s caught, he does it again. And he’s been facilitated by a legitimate incorporation agent that, for reasons we don’t understand, incorporated an obviously fraudulent fake bank for him. This report […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The “Offshore Advisory Group” publishes political commentary including conspiracy theories originating in Russian propaganda outlets. It uses the attention this attracts to sell a tax avoidance scheme that supposedly lets UK businesses escape UK tax by incorporating in Gibraltar. The scheme is hopeless and will trigger large taxes and penalties – and if not disclosed […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
There’s a tax paradox in the UK. Overall, we’re paying more tax as a percentage of GDP than at any time since the 1940s – and most people believe they’re over-taxed. Yet, at the same time, the average UK worker paid less tax on their wages in 2024 than any year since the War, and […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Reform UK is proposing a “Britannia card” that would let wealthy foreigners pay a £250k fee to move to the UK and live here exempt from all tax on their foreign assets. All fees received would be distributed, “Robin Hood”-style, to the 2.5 million lowest-paid workers in the UK. Reform UK don’t include any analysis […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The “tax gap” is the difference between the tax HMRC should collect and the tax it actually collects. Over the last nineteen years, most of the tax gap has fallen by two-thirds – a remarkable achievement. But a deep dive into HMRC’s latest tax gap statistics shows that HMRC has lost control of small business […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Angela Rayner’s leaked tax memo to Rachel Reeves outlines a raft of new revenue raisers. In this post, I look at each proposal, and ask whether it makes sense, and whether it would raise the claimed amount. The original report from the Telegraph sets out the detail of the memo – see also coverage from […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
A new analysis by Tax Policy Associates shows that 900,000 UK companies have no UK directors – all their directors live abroad. This is permitted by current UK company law – but our analysis finds that these companies are seventeen times more likely to show signs of fraud than companies with at least one UK […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Political parties’ local branches are failing to pay tax on their commercial income – even when that income is funded by taxpayers. All the political parties talk about the tax gap – the £40bn difference between the tax that should be paid and the tax that isn’t. So we’d expect the political parties to lead […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
It’s sometimes said that we should go back to the tax system of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, with very high rates of tax on the highest earners. We’ve spoken to people who were around at the time – both tax avoiders and HMRC officials – and looked at the data. Our conclusion: the apparently […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Last month, parents backed by the Independent Schools Council made a legal challenge against the Government’s decision to charge VAT on private school fees. We’re publishing the grounds of the challenge and our analysis. The challenge is more political than legal – it cites no relevant legal precedents and has very poor prospects of success. […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
ZLX is the R&D tax firm notorious for suing a client who wasn’t willing to put in a comical R&D tax claim for installing a fridge. They’ve changed their name to TaxTek – but the game is the same: pretending to be tax specialists when actually hiring a large sales team and “technical specialists” with […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Friday 4 April episode of Untaxing was the peculiar story of a tax firm, ZLX, that promised a client £30,000 in R&D tax relief for installing a fridge. The client quickly realised such a claim would be nonsense, and pulled out – but ZLX refused to accept that, and sued them for fees. That […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Today’s episode of Untaxing is about Jaffa cakes and VAT. With the benefit of hindsight, that’s a very small VAT issue on a day when VAT has become a very large geopolitical issue. Donald Trump is considering applying tariffs to much of the world because of VAT. He believes it’s a tariff. You’ll be unsurprised […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Art Laffer drew a curve on a napkin in 1974 that he said proved that tax cuts would pay for themselves. This is sometimes right, and sometimes wrong – and it’s a mistake to just assume the answer without looking at the evidence. This article, written to accompany the first episode of Untaxing, looks at […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
It wasn’t mentioned in the Chancellor’s speech, but the Spring Statement papers contain a major suite of anti-tax avoidance proposals, probably the toughest ever introduced. If enacted this will, in effect, criminalise the tax avoidance industry. We welcome it. There is a mini-industry of creating tax avoidance schemes which have no prospect of success. We […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
I’m presenting and co-writing a new short Radio 4 series, Untaxing. It’s about how tax affects our lives: from the Laffer Curve, to the Beatles, to Jaffa Cakes, and modern day avoidance. 1.45pm on Radio 4, every day next week, from Monday 31 March. On BBC Sounds as each episode airs. I’ll update this page […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
OneE made £10 million selling doomed R&D tax schemes – leaving investors with nothing and taxpayers footing the bill. Here’s how they did it, and here’s how we would change the law to end the tax avoidance industry for good. The scheme involved an attempt to use research and development tax relief to generate tax […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
UK company law requires every UK company to disclose the individuals who control it – their “person with significant control” (PSC). But the rules are widely ignored. We’ve found that around 50,000 UK companies hide their true ownership by unlawfully listing a foreign company as their PSC – that’s not permitted. And we’re publishing an […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
A firm called Arka Wealth have widely promoted a tax scheme which they claim avoids all corporate tax, income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax – not just in the UK but across Europe. They work with a barrister called Setu Kamal, who they say is “one of Europe’s leading tax barristers”. Arka Wealth’s […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Many fraudulent companies at Companies House are run by entirely fake directors – non-existent people with fabricated identities. But many others are fronted by “muppet” directors: real individuals, often recruited through Facebook, who lend their names to companies they don’t actually control. The true masterminds behind the fraud remain in the shadows. From next month, […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
A mining giant claiming £4bn in revenue, certified by a fake auditor on 128 pages of meticulously detailed fake accounts. A bank with a login page that can’t log anyone in. A trust holding $327bn in Tsarist gold that never existed. Even endorsements from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Nadhim Zahawi, and Baroness Mone […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We’ve been reporting on the shockingly brazen accounting frauds that slip through Companies House. Our new web-based fraud-finding tool takes just a few clicks to expose suspicious companies. We hope it’s useful to everyone interested in uncovering fraud, and helps illustrate how easy it would be for Companies House to do a better job of […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Anyone can set up a company on Companies House, and say it’s a bank. We’ve written an automated tool that smokes them out. In three minutes, it identified sixteen “banks” with fake assets. Today we’re publishing our analysis of the sixteen fake banks, together with full instructions on how to use our tool to find […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We’ve created an automated search tool that crawls Companies House data to find companies with fraudulent accounts. It’s found hundreds of dubious companies, the worst of which claims £100 trillion of assets. Our findings suggest that Companies House is asleep at the wheel. But they also show that it would be straightforward to clean things […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Avis Capital Limited is one of the largest companies in the UK. It says it was spun out from Avis (the car hire company), is FCA-regulated and has £58bn of net assets. It promises investors a 31% return. But all of this is a lie. Avis Capital’s accounts are a work of fiction. It’s completely […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
It’s often claimed that tax cuts will “pay for themselves”. There’s good reason to believe that some historic tax cuts have done precisely this – what does that tell us about proposals for tax cuts today? And what does history tell us about the potential to increase revenues by raising tax on the highest earners? […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
New data suggests that one third of the farm estates affected by the Budget changes aren’t owned by farmers – they’re held by investors for tax planning purposes. This suggests the Budget proposal doesn’t go far enough to stop avoidance, but goes too far in how it applies to actual farms. There’s a better approach […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Despite the Government’s stated commitment to growth, the Budget included no pro-growth tax reform, and its largest revenue raising measure is likely to reduce private sector employment and wages. The Budget continued a sad trend of tax policy driven by realpolitik rather than long term strategic thinking. It’s to be hoped we see something more […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Between 2018 and 2022, almost 660,000 people on low incomes received a penalty for not filing a tax return on time. Very few of them earned enough to pay any tax. But, by failing to submit a tax return, they were fined at least £100, and often thousands of pounds. For most of those affected, the penalty represents more than half their weekly income. This report illustrates the scale of the problem. 45% of all HMRC late filing penalties were charged to people on low incomes, most of whom actu...| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
HMRC is alleging Mr Venables evaded nine years’ tax in his personal tax returns. Tax evasion (technically “cheating the revenue”) is a criminal offence. Tax avoidance is not. The key difference is that tax evasion involves dishonesty. There’s more on what that means in our tax avoidance/evasion FAQ. Barristers have been prosecuted for tax evasion […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
This is an updated version of an article first published in 2023. What’s the very short answer? It’s this: (click to make bigger) But what is the legal definition of “tax avoidance”? There isn’t one. More precisely, there isn’t a single legal definition of “tax avoidance”. If there was, life would be easy: we’d pass […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Gabriel Milland of Portland Communications has published polling conducted by the Portland research team in early October. Gabriel takes some interesting political conclusions from the polling (and I’d recommend his article). However, my focus is what the polling says about tax policy, and about polling on tax policy. Amended to include the answers – apologies […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
HMRC has designated two structures used by the adviser ‘Property118’ as “tax avoidance schemes”. Property118 are appealing to a tax tribunal, and have asked their clients to provide witness statements. That’s perfectly normal. But what’s not normal at all is that Property118 are directing the content of the witness statements. It would be serious professional […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Nobody’s looking forward to tax rises in the Budget. To create at least some upside, we’ve made a simple Budget prediction quiz. We’ve listed 34 potential ways the Chancellor could raise tax. Go to the quiz (link below), and tick the tax rises that you predict will happen. For every prediction you get right, you […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Rachel Reeves has said there is a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances, and that she’ll have to raise tax to fill it. Labour are heavily constrained by their pre-election promises, and that makes raising £22bn a challenging endeavour. But certainly not impossible. This is an updated version of my August article. I’ve previously […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Property taxes are probably more in need of reform than any other area of UK tax. We have three taxes on property: stamp duty (SDLT), council tax and business rates. They’re bad taxes: they’re unpopular, inequitable, and they hold back growth. There is a way to change this, and tax land in a way that […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
It is a national scandal that teachers, doctors and others earning fairly ordinary salaries can face marginal tax rates of more than 60%, and sometimes approaching 80%. It’s inequitable and holds back growth. Rachel Reeves should commit to ending these anomalies. This Government was elected on a platform of kickstarting economic growth. It has a […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Capital gains tax (CGT) is currently both too high and too low. It taxes investors at too high a rate when they’ve put capital at risk, only to see it eroded by inflation. But it enables a very low rate of tax for people who haven’t put capital at risk, but are able to pay […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
There’s 13.8% employer national insurance when someone’s employed, and nothing when they’re not. That’s unfair – but also creates a huge amount of uncertainty, litigation and tax avoidance. There are reports that Labour is considering increasing employer national insurance. We shouldn’t be talking about raising employer’s national insurance – we should be talking about abolition. […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Stamp duty was one of the triggers for the American Revolution. Somehow, 250 years later, we still have it. That makes no sense - it raises no money, and creates cost and uncertainty for business. The Government should abolish it| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
This Government was elected on a platform of kickstarting economic growth. It has a large majority, and four or five years until the next election. It’s a rare chance for real pro-growth tax reform. That’s all the more necessary if we are going to see tax rises. We’ll be presenting a series of tax reform […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
A document disclosed to the Post Office Inquiry, and published yesterday, shows that the Post Office considered requiring that postmasters pay a fee before applying for compensation. The intention was to deter applications. Realising this would be criticised, the Post Office instead designed a scheme which achieved the same effect through stringent (and unrealistic) eligibility […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Postmasters previously offered derisory compensation by the Post Office are being given a new opportunity to claim under an independent appeals process. The Post Office has written to them offering the choice of appealing, or accepting a £75k flat payment. It’s one or the other – a difficult decision for which postmasters should receive detailed […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Recent events have highlighted R&D tax credit fraud. However we believe the scale of the problem is much higher than previously reported. We’ve a new analysis suggesting that the total cost of fraudulent and mistaken claims could be £10bn, or even higher. The mystery is how this went on for so long, when plenty of […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Which MP is the highest earner? Who receives the highest donations? Who takes the most foreign trips? We’ve just launched an interactive map that lets you explore all this and more. Apologies – this is currently down… the map needs to be updated. We hope to get to this soon. There’s an important political debate […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Offshore secrecy is a problem. Tax avoidance, tax evasion, sanctions evasion, drug cartels, corruption, questionable government contracts – all have been enabled by offshore companies whose ownership and accounts are hidden from public view. We believe everyone would benefit if all companies, everywhere in the world, had to publish basic information: their shareholders, directors, beneficial […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Our proposal to end offshore secrecy, and move the world towards open registers, is here. But right now, the world looks like this: The interactive chart above shows how open each country’s corporate registry is. All thanks to data from opencorporates.com, and you can click on a country to go to the individual assessment. Full […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We reported on Monday that, if you incorporate a UK company, you are likely to receive an official-looking letter from “Company Registry” charging you £45. It’s a scam, and a large and well-organised one. We’ll be naming and shaming the legitimate businesses who are facilitating the scam. The first was Tide, who signed up the […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We reported yesterday that, if you incorporate a UK company, you are likely to receive a letter from “Company Registry” charging you £45. It’s a scam, and a large and well-organised one. We’ll be naming and shaming the legitimate businesses who are facilitating the scam. The first is Tide – the FCA-regulated “all-in-one business finance […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Directors of newly incorporated UK companies are receiving official-looking letters from “Company Registry” requiring them to pay a fee. It’s a scam – and potentially a very lucrative one. We’ve looked into who’s behind it and identified one individual who the authorities should be questioning. We frequently receive tip-offs from accountants and lawyers who’ve seen […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
There’s a report Labour’s non-dom changes will cost the UK £1bn – but the figure is meaningless, based on a self-selected survey. The report shouldn’t distract from what’s an important question – what will actually happen if the Government completely abolishes the non-dom regime? And are the consequences bad enough that the Government should reconsider […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Companies associated with the struck-off solicitor, convicted fraudster, bankrupt, pornographer, and negligent tax avoidance scheme promoter Paul Baxendale-Walker continue to sell elaborate tax avoidance schemes. The details of the schemes, and their purported technical justifications, are kept a closely guarded secret. Today we are publishing them, and explaining why they fail. We frequently receive tip-offs […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Update: there have now been arrests. Comments on this post are closed. Here’s a nice looking website for accounting firm Turner & Abel: The mystery There are some signs that all isn’t right. So it seems reasonably clear the firm is fake. Why create a fake firm? I’ve hidden the biggest clue. The company doesn’t […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We frequently receive tip-offs from accountants and lawyers who’ve seen firms promoting dubious tax schemes. This often requires a large amount of analysis from us to work out exactly what’s going on, and what the true tax consequence is. But sometimes it’s obvious that what’s being proposed is wildly improper, even fraudulent. We’re going to […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
R&D tax fraud outfit Green Jellyfish is part of a complex group of companies. Two of those companies, Macadam & Grant and Toucan Blue, promote “GDPR tax credits”. There is no such thing. It’s plain tax fraud. Update: there have now been arrests. Comments on this post are closed. We wrote last year about firms […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The UK loses £1bn each year to fraudulent claims for research and development (R&D) tax relief. We revealed last week that one of the largest firms in the market, Green Jellyfish (and its associated firm Kirby & Haslam), made fraudulent claims. We can now reveal in detail how the fraud worked. We believe they’re responsible […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
BBC Merseyside is reporting on a ludicrous attempt to avoid business rates using snails. It is so stupid that I cannot do justice to it – please read the story (radio version here). This is, however, just one of many stupid schemes to avoid business rates. And the bizarre thing is that historically they have […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The UK loses £1bn each year to fraudulent claims for research and development (R&D) tax relief. We can reveal that one of the firms responsible is Green Jellyfish – one of the largest firms in the market. Green Jellyfish says it’s a specialist in research and development tax relief, and that they help companies claim […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
This page contains an automatically-updated list of every public limited company that’s missed the deadline for filing its confirmation statement. Listed companies are highlighted in yellow, and FCA-regulated companies in red. The confirmation statement used to be called the “annual return” – it’s simply a short confirmation that the company’s details held with Companies House […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
This page contains an automatically-updated list of every public limited company that’s missed the deadline for filing its statutory accounts. Listed companies are highlighted in yellow; FCA regulated companies in red. You can click on each column to sort it, and click on a company name to jump to its Companies House entry. Note that […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
This is now replaced by our automatically-updating list of PLCs with late accounts. Brewdog plc is six weeks late filing its accounts with Companies House: How unusual is this? On 1 August 2024, there were 4,430 active public limited companies. Ignoring those that appear completely defunct, there were 132 that hadn’t filed on time by […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Rachel Reeves has said there is a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances, and that she’ll have to raise tax to fill it. Labour are heavily constrained by their pre-election promises, and that makes raising £22bn a challenging endeavour. But certainly not impossible. So, whilst I’ve previously written about eight tax cuts that the […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We’ve been investigating a Belize company called GCWealth. It says its offshore trusts can eliminate tax on your assets, and prevent your spouse or creditors ever accessing the assets. And GCWealth claims that billions of pounds have been put into their schemes in the last fifteen years. Our experts believe GCWealth’s claimed tax, divorce and […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Tens of thousands of people (including me!) just received this email from Property118, attaching a rather scary HMRC “stop notice” (PDF version here, or click on thumbnails below): We all received the email because we once downloaded an ebook from the Property118 website. What should you do if you’re in this position? Nothing. If all […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We have previously reported on a high profile unregulated firm called “Property118”, which promoted a series of landlord tax avoidance schemes. HMRC took action, and Property118 has resorted to asking their clients to make donations to fund their appeals. Despite this, Property118 continues to promote tax avoidance that doesn’t work and will land its clients […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Updated polling evidence from Tax Policy Associates and WeThink shows that half the public doesn’t understand a basic principle of income tax: the way that tax rates apply to income above a threshold. Half of voters believe that, once you hit the higher rate threshold, the 40% higher rate applies to all your earnings. The […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
At a time when the UK’s finances look fragile, the new Chancellor would be forgiven for thinking the only purpose of changing the tax system is to raise Government funding. There is, however, another purpose: to fix those elements of the UK tax system which stand in the way of growth and those elements that […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We wrote last month about Paul Baxendale-Walker, the former barrister and solicitor who helped create the “loan schemes” that cost the country £billions and caused misery for tens of thousands of people. HMRC say his schemes avoided £1bn in tax. His advice was negligent, and he eventually ended up struck off, bankrupt, and convicted of […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Over the last seventeen years most of the tax gap fell by two-thirds – a remarkable achievement. But a deep dive into HMRC’s new tax gap statistics shows HMRC has lost control of small business tax. About a third of corporation tax due from the sector is not being paid. The small business tax gap […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Post Office recklessly published the names and addresses of 550 wrongfully convicted postmasters. But it takes a very different attitude to its own data privacy, running frivolous GDPR arguments to cover up its corporate failings. This is how the Post Office protected the data privacy of the 550 wrongfully convicted postmasters: But the Post […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Paul Baxendale-Walker is probably the UK’s most notorious tax avoidance scheme promoter. He’s the former barrister and solicitor who helped create the “loan schemes” that cost the country £billions and have caused misery for tens of thousands of people. HMRC say his schemes avoided £1bn in tax. His advice was negligent, and he eventually ended […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
We keep talking about marginal rates, but rarely stop to explain exactly what they are, and why they matter. Here’s a short explainer, to accompany our interactive marginal rate charts. There is an updated article on marginal rates here. The marginal rate is the percentage of tax you’ll pay on your next £1 of income. […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Reform UK has published its manifesto. They plan personal tax cuts which they say will cost £70bn; however our analysis shows that they’ve miscalculated, and the actual cost will be at least £88bn. Reform UK says it will fund these tax costs with £70bn of savings and additional revenue, but it provides few details. Their […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Labour Party has published its manifesto. Labour claims to raise £7.35bn from additional tax – but almost three-quarters of that is from increased tax compliance rather than actual new taxes. The most obvious criticism is a lack of ambition, and lack of any proposals to reform the most serious problems with our tax system. […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Conservative manifesto is here, and an accompanying costings document is here. It proposes £6bn of tax cuts in 2024/25, rising to £17bn in 2029/30. The tax cut figures appear realistic; the question is whether they are affordable. But the bigger question is why the manifesto is almost completely silent on tax reform, when so […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Lib Dem manifesto is here, and a separate costings document is here. It claims to raise £27bn from tax increases. There is very little detail, but five items seem questionable, representing over £9bn in total: First, the Lib Dems propose to raise £1.4bn from a tax on share buybacks. But the tax is badly […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Lib Dems are proposing a 4% tax on share buybacks that they say would raise £1.4bn/year. It’s based on a similar proposal in America. But circumstances in the US and UK are very different. This means that the rationale for the US tax isn’t relevant to the UK and, more importantly, that the Lib […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Stamp duty is a terrible tax. The Tories want to abolish it for most first time buyers. But the evidence shows that cutting stamp duty increases house prices, and that previous attempts to provide relief for first time buyers were ineffective. Council tax is also terrible tax – with Buckingham Palace paying less council tax […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Iain Clifford Stamp and his business, “Matrix Freedom”, are selling a scheme which falsely claims to make their clients’ mortgages disappear. The scheme relies upon “freeman on the land” conspiracy theories about how the world and the legal system work. The High Court just threw out Stamp’s claims, and said those behind the schemes may […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Green Party says it will raise £50bn in tax from the “richest”. But their proposal will probably end up affecting half of all households. Whilst some of the very wealthiest will pay no additional tax at all, there will be people on fairly ordinary incomes facing marginal tax rates of 70%. The Greens should […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Conservative Party has just proposed moving the point at which child benefit is phased out from income of £60k to £120k. This will greatly reduce the marginal rate for parents earning £60-80k. But it means that a parent earning £120k who has three children will face a 70% marginal rate. And they’ll face a […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The general election tax debate has been irrelevant. The few £bn being discussed is dwarfed by the actual tax UK tax increases over the last few years, and the further tax increases we’ll almost certainly see in the future. I summarised this point on Sky TV on Wednesday. Here’s all UK taxes paid in 2023-24: […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
Some people on social media are convinced that Jeremy Hunt avoided tax when he bought seven flats through a company in 2018. We’ve analysed the transaction and believe it’s clear that he didn’t. Here are the claims (click to expand): Probably originating from this piece in the Mirror in 2018, itself based on this Telegraph […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
The Independent Schools Council received a survey on parents’ responses to VAT on private school fees. It was statistically meaningless, and the authors of the report say this was clear in the report. The ISC then gave the survey results to the Daily Mail without this vital context, and the result was a highly misleading […]| Tax Policy Associates Ltd
All three political parties say they can raise £5bn or more from cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion. How plausible is this? UPDATED with the June 2024 tax gap figures James Cleverly said on 26…| Tax Policy Associates