The Guardian has reported that:
Child poverty in Britain has increased for the second year in a row, government figures revealed yesterday, putting Labour’s target to halve it by the end of the decade in jeopardy.
The estimated cost of getting on track now is £2.7 billion a year. That could have been raised by completely abolsihing […]
Bill Dodwell, head of tax at Deloittes UK ha suggested my work on the Tax Gap is ‘just rubbish’. Well, it’s a free country, and he has a right to his opinion.
He also has a right to his own particular use of the term tax avoidance, about which we clearly do no agree. His own […]
There’s a chap called Tim Worstall who writes a blog and who seems pretty fixated on what I write.
The difficulty for Tim Worstall (who, I believe considers himself a libertarian right winger and so carries with him all the baggage that goes with those labels) is that he seem to have little understanding of the […]
I admit that there are moments when I quietly despair of the harm that is likely to result from so called tax reforms. This morning the FT has reported that:
Corporation tax should be scrapped and replaced by extra value added tax
adding that:
The proposal, which is designed to address the growing difficulties faced by the Treasury […]
The Guardian has admitted that it libelled Tescos in its articles (no longer available on the web) published in February in which it alleged that Tesco avoided corporation tax using a complex offshore structure. This follows the apology it published two weeks ago.
I have advised the Guardian, but not on the original stories it published […]
Michael Meacher gave a significant and courageous speech in the House of Commons last night, for which I was pleased to offer him some research assistance. He said (when the interruptions are edited out):
Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): I want, in a short speech, to concentrate on the most politically contentious part […]
The TUC issued this press release today:
HMRC say tax avoidance could be costing every household more than £1,500 a year
In a document published late on budget day with no publicity, HMRC has said that the cost of tax avoidance in the UK could run as high as £40 billion a year. This tax avoidance could […]
One of the most unexpected spin offs from my work for the TUC has been its use in a study of reactions to the report amongst younger people, now reported on the Guardian blog. Greg Philo, the research director of Glasgow University Media Unit, asked the question:
Are young people interested in politics? Certainly there are […]
Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary has written about the Tax Gap on his Guardian blog. As he notes:
While many worry about the growth of social division, few have had any practical solutions. The TUC does. You may not be able to limit income in a free society, but you can at least make sure people […]
The TUC report ‘The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap’, published this morning has a number of recommendations in it for both stopping abuse and simplifying the tax system. One that the TUC have highlighted today is a plan to prevent the wholly unwarranted tax relief given on charitable donations to higher rate tax payers, […]
