It takes 2.4 million households to pay for the tax gap

Posted on

The Guardian has launched its Tax Gap series. As it notes:

Last October the public accounts committee criticised the Treasury for its inability to measure the missing billions. It said: "The department does not have a robust measure of the corporation tax gap. It should develop such a measure and publish the results."

I have, of course, already worked on this issue, and the research I did for the TUC is extensively referred to.

These are difficult to relate to real life. But if the TUC is correct, it means that 2.4m households - a tenth of all those in Britain - are paying over their entire annual income tax just to plug the gap left by the legal manoeuvres of big corporations.

I am, of course, happy with the research I did. I do, in fact, think that as with all my estimates it is cautious and bound to underestimate the problem as a result.

But look at that statistic: it takes 2.4 million households to make up the gap caused by legal tax avoidance. See it this way and it is obvious what is happening: the rich are making themselves richer at the expense of ordinary people in the UK.

No wonder those ordinary people are fed up with the taxes they pay.

No wonder they are annoyed at the stealth taxes they have been charged with.

No wonder they are fed up with politicians who will not stand up to these corporations.

The Guardian is right to draw attention to this issue: it is the cause of one of the fundamental social grievances in our society right now and it has to be addressed.


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:

  • Richard Murphy

    Read more about me

  • Support This Site

    If you like what I do please support me on Ko-fi using credit or debit card or PayPal

  • Taxing wealth report 2024

  • Newsletter signup

    Get a daily email of my blog posts.

    Please wait...

    Thank you for sign up!

  • Podcast

  • Follow me

    LinkedIn

    LinkedIn

    Mastodon

    @RichardJMurphy

    Twitter

    @RichardJMurphy

    Instagram

    @RichardJMurphy