{"id":12787,"date":"2011-11-10T10:48:59","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T10:48:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=12787"},"modified":"2011-11-10T10:48:59","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T10:48:59","slug":"the-economic-crisis-has-one-cause-the-tax-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/11\/10\/the-economic-crisis-has-one-cause-the-tax-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"The economic crisis has one cause &#8211; the tax gap"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I've talked about economiuc crisis for a long time.<\/p>\n<p>I've <a href=\"http:\/\/courageousstate.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">got a\u00a0book\u00a0coming out<\/a> about what I think we need to do about it next week (I'm assured the printing is underway, now).<\/p>\n<p>And let's now have no doubt about it: the crisis is for real.<\/p>\n<p>Italy can no longer pretend it is not bust: it is.<\/p>\n<p>I stress, it's not bust\u00a0because\u00a0of overspending. It's not been profligate. It could pay for the services it has consumed, and did. It just chose not to do so through taxes. By that I mean it's bust\u00a0because\u00a0of the size of its shadow economy. That's 27% of its GDP. Its effective tax rate is 43.1%. It loses, annually, as a result about \u00e2\u201a\u00ac175 billion in tax.<\/p>\n<p>Its debt is about \u00e2\u201a\u00ac1.9 trillion.<\/p>\n<p>That's a bit over a decade of tax evasion.<\/p>\n<p>That's why Italy is in crisis.<\/p>\n<p>That is why the EU is in crisis.<\/p>\n<p>That is why the world is in crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The tax gap is the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Collecting tax will be the solution.<\/p>\n<p>Of course there are massive other issues to be addressed.<\/p>\n<p>But that's the cause of this crisis. And that's in the long run its solution.<\/p>\n<p>And that's a recognition that is absent right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve talked about economiuc crisis for a long time. I&#8217;ve got a\u00a0book\u00a0coming out about what I think we need to do about it next week<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/11\/10\/the-economic-crisis-has-one-cause-the-tax-gap\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,50,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-gap","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}