The Guardian carried an article under this title this morning. The question is a good one. Especially as they are specifically contrasted with the Tax Justice Network, to whom I am an adviser.
The answer is raised in a media context: how do they get so much publicity. They claim the answer is:
"We are always available 24 hours a day," says [chief executive] Elliott. "We put the work in so we get good coverage."
Actually, I don't buy that. Lot's of people are available 24 hours a day and don't get as much coverage. TJN, for start, even though we (unlike the TPA) actually try to provide considered analysis and real research on stories.
The reason why the TPA get coverage is much easier to explain. Take chairman Andrew Allum's profile for a start. As he says:
He left the [Conservative] party in 2003, having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics.
Put it another way: he moved further Right than the right wing of the Tories. He moved out of the political mainstream and into the Neo-Con, libertarian hinterlands. He gave up analysis at that time. He took up government bashing (by which I mean, all government, not just the government of the moment) and that covered his anti-tax agenda (I mean all tax, not particular tax).
And we have a media that supports this view; laps it up and feeds it as objective comment to the British public. Just look at the Sunday Times budget supplement yesterday, which featured on 'stealth taxes' and actually quoted a women claiming she was questioning the value of her £16,000 a year job because she was going to suffer a £27 tax increase this coming year.
This is crass reporting. The story is complete rubbish. She simply won't notice the difference. Her family as a whole will be £88 a year worse off (but I note increases in child allowance weren't taken into account, so that probably overstates the case) but the media wanted to find an anti-tax story. The Tax Payer's Alliance pedals them this sort of nonsensical yarn knowing that no-one will ever act on what they say. Which is precisely why the Tories said yesterday that there were no grounds for cutting taxes.
Unlike the TPA, the TJN works in the real world. We talk to real politicians, from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and across the Labour perspective. We do not deal outside the limits of credibility. But facing real issues makes it so much harder to get coverage.
But I'll trade fewer press reports for credibility any day, and there is no one of any credibility in government or opposition in our parliament who takes the TPA seriously. Thankfully.
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I’m entirely with you on this Richard. I don’t know the TPA (other than through their press coverage) but suspect that their agenda is not dissimilar to one or two other frequent commentators in the mainstream press.
When I was Chairman of the ICAEW’s Tax Faculty I got my fair share of coverage but it was nothing as compared with the tax spokesman for another accountancy body. One fundamental difference then (and now) is that he has apparent freedom to create quotes and to take positions that do not require anyone else’s prior approval. A key part of his job is to get his name in the press as often as possible. ICAEW members complain that ICAEW reps are not as visible. The process is more complex and those who might be the face of tax for ICAEW are heavily involved in other activities, considering con docs, collating views, preparing responses and taking part in face to face discussions with HMRC, the Treasury and MPs. These are considered to be more worthwhile activities than getting quotes in the press every day.
I can tell from your piece above that the distinction between TPA and TJN is partly due to a similar choice being made as regards how to spend time and effort.
Mark
[…] Research has an article criticising the TaxPayers’ Alliance for being a bunch of rentaquote extreme-right-wingers who distort the facts to bash Labour, […]
If you think that you have any credibility, Richard, you are seriously mistaken. Someone who is unable to discern the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is not going to be taken seriously by anyone with two brain cells to rub together.
The reason that the government will listen to you is because you tell them want they want to hear, i.e. that they should rake in much more tax so that they may waste it on yet more pointless, expensive and downright damaging schemes.
DK
P.S. Your conflation of Neo-Con and Libertarian demonstrates your ignorance of political theory: a fundamental of libertarian thought is the non-aggression rule, which hardly sits with the expansionist Neo-Con agenda.
DK
But how wrong you are! The far right are the far right – and if they wish to argue with each others defintions of ‘rightness’, so be it. The world will still ignore them.
But in the real world the fact that there is no clear distinction between tax evasion and avoidance does matter. And it’s this ability to see beyond the pointless argument on definition to the reality of life as it actually is that makes all the difference.
Richard
PS Please don’t bother to reply – as you know, I find your style so offensive I won’t be repeating this unusual exception of allowing you on here for a change
[…] note that the Far Right blog community are very upset with me tonight and are visiting this site in […]
[…] Tim W and Tim at the Conservative Party Reptile, I am now (unfortunately) aware of Richard Murphy. I wish I wasn’t, but, I am. Tim accuses Murphy of being lazy when defining people with whom […]
There seems very little of substance behind the TPA. I believe the problem lies with the nature of soundbite reporting and the misleading name of this right wing lobby group. The main aim of the TPA, it appears, is to promote lower taxes, to the average news viewer the TPA come across as crusaders against unjust taxation and fat cat politicians. The coverage the TPA receives reflects the need by the media for provocative and easily digested McNews. Human nature always tends towards self righteous indignation before reason. The TPA is a propaganda machine rather than a lobby group I believe it’s agenda is to create a political ambience favourable to right wing policies by using the issue of taxation as a means of crawling into the public psyche.
A few comments:
1. “her £16,000 a year job”… “She simply won’t notice the difference. Her family as a whole will be £88 a year worse off”. Fortunately, I earn more than £16k a year, but sadly I’m not rich enough not to even notice £88. I suspect on her salary, she’s not rich enough, either.
2. “Unlike the TPA, the TJN works in the real world. We talk to real politicians,” Funny – the ‘real world’ is a phrase I’ve only ever previously heard to describe a place where politicians have never known.
3. “But how wrong you are! The far right are the far right”. DK is right here. It may be fair to compare two different groups and conclude neither has mainstream appeal. But to lump together classical liberalism or ‘libertarianism’ with conservative and socialist ideologies of fascism and National Socialism (or ‘nazism’) defeats the purpose of naming and grouping of ideologies. It makes no sense at all to group together conservative, socialist or liberal ideological sub-groups simply because they share minority public appeal. It is like classifying a chiauwawa and a squirrel in the same order simply because they are of a similar size!
can anyone deny that at least one person in every four in this country is employed in a government tax funded pseudo ”job”. That small businesses are screwed into the ground in order to provide cushy lifestyles for the laziest sections of society and that quangos are totally out of control and that the final salary pensions promised to government employees is impossible to fund without massive levels of tax.
Edward
A fool could say that
Anyone with an ounce of sense could not
What are these pseudo jobs? Nurses, teachers, the police, the forces, health and safety that mean you can buy food and expect to eat it without being ill?
Tell me who the one in 4 are? And don’t say ‘admin’. All services need admin.
Richard
What a pathetic critique of the Tax Payers Alliance!
I agree with you that the woman in question might not notice the difference in income but thats not the point. TPA aims to expose 3 irrifutable facts – tax is going up, the public was never consulted on how it is spent and a huge amount is being wasted on unneeded pay rises, non jobs and bureaucracy.
The fact that Andrew Allum may be right wing (which in your view is unspeakably evil) is besides the point. The TPA is at the forefront in asking why with record spending, public services are at best just coping and at worst falling apart.
If you beg to differ about this shameful state of affairs, I can only conclude you are yourself a stakeholder – either as a member of the client state or supplier to this shambolic government.
Now that the credit crunch is upon us, this is no longer just about the scandal of wasting our money, it is about the future of the economy.
At last the TPA has been shown it’s true colours. I read last week that a spokesperson for The TPA was criticising the amonut of money paid in benefits to the unemployed. The TPA has been screwed by it’s own tactic of outrage provoking headlines.
As unemployment increases more and more ex tax payers will find themselves claiming benefits. These people have paid for these benefits through taxes and national insurance. They are not a burden on society as The TPA would have them portrayed, they do not become second class citizens and they have a right to expect help and support from government.
I have long considered The TPA to be no more than a rabble rousing right wing bunch of intellectually flawed soundbite merchants. The events of the past year have shown that the foundation of their opinons have crumbled beneath them. The tax burden will increase because of an unfettered free market which allowed spivs and sharks to gamble other peoples cash. The TPA pah!
The TPA is a member of the Stockholm Network, check it out on Wikipedia and a simple google of Stockholm Network reveals the true political perspective of organizations like the TPA.
when more than half of the working population of a country is ’employed’ by the government then we certainkly need a ‘tax payers ‘ alliance. of course the government will ensure that people such as richard murphy continue to pretend that it’s ok (i wonder why?). The truth is that the government and every quango and every self-seeking non producer who pretends to be employed by them are operating nothing less than a mafia-style protection racket – one that guarantees them all final salary pensions for life (or at least the lifetime of our grandchildren who will be made to pay for them). Next Big idea?? They’ll reduce speed limits so we can issue more ‘fines’. Or they will use ‘Security’ to Reduce our Freedom. Anyone who will give up their freedom for security deserves neither – what we will deserve is an Orwellian Nightmare where every other person works for the state. . .
I have looked at the TPA website out of interest and to see whether or not it had a policy on tax havens. These are a major source of hardship to the ordinary taxpayer. I have not seen any hint of a campaign to safeguard the taxpayer by abolishing these avoidance schemes. The TPA seems to an outsider with no axe to grind to be a public sector bashing organisation rather than a protector of the taxpayer.
Absolutely correct. The TPA carry out hatchet jobs on any government organisation they can get their hands on to take advantage of people who like to mutter “can anyone deny that at least one person in every four in this country is employed in a government tax funded pseudo ”job”” or government just waste money “on yet more pointless, expensive and downright damaging schemes” into their TV screens.
Conspiracy theorists and nutters with a keyboard, in other words.
They constantly distort facts and display callous disregard for any kind of reasonable objective criteria when carrying out their “research”. As a (private sector I may add) taxpayer, they have never spoken for me, rather looked for faults in services I believe are actually useful for the country.
Just as a single example, they completely destroyed the regional development agencies by claiming that they were essentially useless because they had caused less GDP growth from the seven years they were established in 1999 than from 1992-1999. Now, I have a friend whose business is only where it is today (highly successful!) because of an RDA grant when they first started, so looked into this. In 1992 we were in the depths of a recession, by 1999 we were at a peak. Their “findings” can be found in any GCSE economic textbook, yet they used this to claim the RDAs were essentially useless. Every right-wing paper printed their story word for word. A recent independent PWC study – intended to find out whether this had any basis – found completely the opposite, that every £1 spent by the RDAs generated £4.50 for the country’s coffers, yet this was largely overlooked…
Richard, I commend your work. I heard you on the radio the day before budget day a few weeks ago and found your arguments quite compelling. It’s a shame that the radio 4 presenter did not allow you the opportunity to rebuff the crude “hate-government”, “cut taxes” argument put forward by the (rather aggressive) representative from the Tax Payers Alliance. The TPA is a typical neo-liberal pro-business lobby group (as noted above, part of a worldwide network of such “think” tanks) who use free-market ideological arguments to obfuscate their tangible political lobbying for the state to subsidise the rich and powerful economic interests in the world. Edward Sheridan somewhat misses the point – these people are not an alliance of taxpayers – they are a special interest group that uses crude pro-market ideological argument to pursue its the partisan aims of its specific supporters.
Also, this argument about whether the TPG is libertarian or neo-conservative by Devil’s Kitchen is pointless. As Richard says the far right is the far right, but actually groups that call themselves “libertarian” and “neo-conservative” are basically inter-changeable (e.g. the Heritage Foundation, which has provided guest speakers at TPA alliances) and are anyway, in essence, front groups for politically active powerful private economic interests.
Bal
Thanks for your comments
I agree with them
Richard
So slinging mud at the messenger does seem to work!