Tax Justice Network: Time to bury the Oxford report.
The dispute with Oxford University's Said Business Scholl of Tax continues:
Professor Mike Devereux has a riposte in the FT:
The researchers involved are first-rate, independent academics. As is well known, the centre was initially funded with an endowment from the Hundred Group of companies. But contrary to the implication from the Tax Justice Network, the centre has always operated independently. Not once has the Hundred Group, or any other business group, sought to influence the centre's research.
The centre is now widely financed, and has received a substantial grant from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, after academic peer review. The specific report in question was commissioned and financed by the UK Department for International Development.
The report's criticism of existing work is intended to be constructive, rather than destructive. We find it disappointing that the Tax Justice Network seeks to spread innuendo about the messenger rather than to engage in constructive debate about the research. Those in developing countries deserve serious and balanced research on issues of tax evasion and avoidance.
He's right, but Oxford cannot supply it. Precisely becaause The 100 Group funded, as TJN notes to provide biased opinion. Take a look at this article in Accountancy Age, reporting on the centre’s aims from the outset:
“The culmination of this mission, he (Christopher Wales of Goldman Sachs) says, was the creation and launch of the Oxford University centre for business taxation (see box) on 4 November this year. Based at the Sa?Ød Business school and backed by £5m-worth of funding from the influential Hundred Group of Finance Directors, the centre has been set the goal of using academic weight, alongside HM Revenue & Customs and business expertise and assistance, to achieve a more competitive tax system for British businesses.”
That's not seeking objective, balanced or academic comment. That's right wing think tank land. And that's where Oxford is on this issue.
And that's no doubt why they found as they did in the report they produced, which as TJN reports (link at top) is so riddled with errors it needs to be almost entirely rewritten.
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So using the same crtieria of yours, all the TJN’s reports on tax havens and offshore finance should be buried too, as TJN provides a biased opinion on the subject, just look at their core themes
“We oppose tax havens and offshore finance” http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2#3
That’s not seeking objective, balanced or academic comment. That’s LEFT wing think tank land.
Creg
As usual you entirely miss the point
Oxford claims to be objective and without bias – which is wholly untrue
We make no such claim
As a consequence we are, I suggest, considerably more objective – precisely because we understand subjectivity which Oxford, apparently, does not
Richard
Academics are well known of being an extention and justification of the rich and powerful. Noam Chomsky addressed this issue over 40 years ago an little has changed.
See http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19670223.htm
Intellectuals are often the only ones in a position to defend the population at large from the lies and manipulations that the said rich and powerful espouse. The arguments can be so complex and intentionally confusing to cloud issues in smoke and mirrors to that the populous at large cannot really decipher.
This isn’t really a conspiracy theory – its just the way power works.
Academics get judged on how many papers they publish (and the quality), often funded in some way by grants – as a result they are incentivised and effectively naturally selected.
Is a rich company going to continue to provide grants to an academic who is going to continually debunk the theories that they find useful for the population to believe? No. So they will continue to fund only those researchers who prove themselves to be useful. Of course there will be exceptions, for the arguments to be too one-sided would be too suspicious.
To top it off, any worthy opponants are often offered scholarships taking them off the front line and doing good and wrapping them up in the continual thrust and parry of academia, instead of building up the institutions that are required to help counter-balance the influence that the rich and powerful hold over us
This is the problem of putting private money into academia (I’m sure there are a lot of benefits to come from this as well not mentioned here)
For the record as well, the terms left and right are really not useful and fairly meaningless these days – surely its time we left the 17th Century French revolutionary term.
Perhaps, with reference to the above post, it is another way in which we are misled – that there really is a distinction between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ whereas there is only really the interests of the powerful verse the interest of the majority
I completely agree with Atkinson’s last post.
‘Left’ and ‘right’ are often simply vague labels that people hang around other people’s necks to make for easier targets, the political manifestation of childhood name-calling. Once a name has been implicitly attached to a person or group, it’s much easier for the attacker to reuse canned arguments against the label, rather than address the issues raised. These labels might have been useful at one time, but now simply create fear, uncertainty and doubt, and polarise people, distracting them from the real issues.
Atkinson points out a real issue which I’d like to help to clarify:
“there is only really the interests of the powerful versus the interest of the majority”
Money is power, real power. I don’t think anyone can argue with that.
So, avoiding any notions of ‘left’ or ‘right, it boils down into two choices:
Either you vote and pay taxes, thus putting the power of money into the hands of a democratically elected government, who must answer to the people, or you allow it the rich and powerful, who never answer to the people, to accumulate it, inevitably using that accumulated wealth and power to further increase their own wealth and thus power, thus decreasing (relatively) the power of your vote.
Of course, this is a simplistic view, but in many cases this is the choice. As in this example, where the undemocratic money has been used to set up an organisation whose goal is “using academic weight… to achieve a more competitive tax system for British businesses”, i.e. businesses changing the law to suit themselves.
Taxes pay for things every healthy economy needs: e.g. hospitals, roads and schools, but the most important thing taxes pay for is democracy.
@Mike A
Thanks Mike