From an article by Dame Margaret Hodge in the Guardian this morning:
The Tax Professionals Forum that advises David Gauke on tax policy is filled with representatives from Ernst & Young, KPMG, Grant Thornton, Travers Smith and the Institute of Directors. There is no representative from any of the tax campaigning organisations and nobody from the development charities for whom tax is a major issue.
In other words, the IoD who want to get rid of all taxes on capital to increase inequality in the UK get a voice but the supporters of the positive role tax has to play in society do not.
Why is that?
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I fear it is probably because the Government does not want tax justice – they are happy with the current system and the tax avoidance opportunities it offers 🙁
Yes I fear that is true thank god for persons like Richard Murpy I struggle to understand my own tax most of the time, let alone understand the workings of HMRC thank you Richard
This aptly sums up this contemptuous government – let the foxes care for the chickens. TV and the public forum has been stripped of “adult supervision” so the boys can continue their fun and destruction. Representatives of the labour movement are similarly sidelined from TV, neoliberalism has been spectacularly successful in suppressing the counter narrative. Why? We simply fear losing our income or career chances to utter any dissent to the dominant narrative in the work place. “Do you want a line under you name or through it?” I fear history has shown us we’ll have to wait for a cataclysm before the citizen says ‘enough of this’.
It is yet another example of the rigged political system that proves beyond doubt we do not have democracy in this country as the “right to vote” has been gamed so much behind the scenes that it is now mostly irrelevant.
Proportional representation should apply to all bodies that are publicly funded. Why on earth should any political party control the narrative and direction of travel with only 20-30% of the voting public support. The first past the post system and all the moral corruption in-bred into the Westminster system is seriously overdue for radical overhaul.
Who else could appreciate that “trading with a view to profit” means trading with a view to eliminating “taxable” profit. It takes years of experience to reach this level of sophistry.
I came across the term “spoils system” today while reading about the American Gilded Age of the late 19th century.
It seems to sum up politics today in the UK very nicely!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
Interesting that you quote Margaret Hodge when only last week you asserted that she wasn’t intelligent enough to make her own decisions about her APPG and also accused COVI – who publish your work and gave you free publicity for your book – of unduly influencing her? Maybe it is this sort of erratic-ness that govt does not trust in an advisor.
Actually it’s consistency on my part
I oppose one sided debate. I suggested john Christensen or Alex Cobham be asked to join a panel and john has been now
And I have always expressed doubts about Covi’s independence whilst engaging with them. I am not alone. It would be odd if I did not have doubts about a KPMG funded organisation. But I do talk to KPMG.
As for being an adviser – I never asked for or sought the role
I have made the point that there should be such advisers
Maybe the clue lies in the name of the forum.