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.
5 Comments
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
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
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!
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