{"id":19285,"date":"2013-02-16T12:04:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T12:04:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19285"},"modified":"2013-02-16T12:04:38","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T12:04:38","slug":"bill-dodwell-is-the-face-of-a-frightened-tax-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/02\/16\/bill-dodwell-is-the-face-of-a-frightened-tax-profession\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Dodwell is the face of a frightened tax profession"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tax\u00a0Journal\u00a0published\u00a0an\u00a0article\u00a0yesterday entitled 'Urban myths and the recent tax debate<\/a>'.\u00a0I think I should put The Tax Journal in context: it is a sister\u00a0publication\u00a0to Taxation, whose editor recently awarded\u00a0Margaret\u00a0Hodge MP its aware for tax prat of the year<\/a>. Where its bias might be is, I hope clear.<\/p>\n

And the article on 'Urban\u00a0myths' \u00a0is not just biased; it is, like the article in Taxation on Hodge,\u00a0defamatory. But on this\u00a0occasion\u00a0the article was not written by a staff member, it was\u00a0written\u00a0by Bill Dodwell, who leads Deloitte's tax policy group and who is also now technical director at the Chartered Institute of Tax. This is a man of\u00a0influence\u00a0who should know his stuff. And he doesn't. Worse, whilst revealing his lack of knowledge and misinformation he resorts to what now seems to be becoming type for the tax profession, and starts hurling abuse.<\/p>\n

Bill (I'll be familiar since he serves with me on the\u00a0general anti-avoidance rule committee and I've seen him this week) makes so many errors in his article it would take considerable time to catalogue them, so I'll just mention a few.<\/p>\n

He writes about tax havens and obviously has no clue at all about what they are. He's obviously caught in a deep time warp that they're all about palm lined beaches, small\u00a0islands\u00a0and zero tax rate states. Of course, his firm is in many such places where nothing of substance takes place (as he clearly infers he knows in his\u00a0article) but that\u00a0perception\u00a0of tax havens has not been shared by anyone with any appreciation of this issue for well over a decade now.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0process\u00a0he denies that places like Ireland, the\u00a0Netherlands\u00a0and Switzerland are tax havens, quoting headline tax rates as if that proves the case. He hints at a few special exemptions, but then ignores them. But as we know, all offer tax regime designed to ensure very low tax rates result, whatever the headlines. The impression Dodwell gives is grossly misleading. In the process he deliberately maligns Action Aid and Christian Aid who have done much to reveal the\u00a0truth\u00a0on these issues.<\/p>\n

Ane then we come to the tax gap where he says my work is wrong because it does not use HMRC data sets. Well, he's clearly missing the point\u00a0there, because much of it does use precisely that data, but it's true on\u00a0corporations\u00a0I used something\u00a0much\u00a0more powerful, which was the accounts of the companies \u00a0his firm, amongst others, \u00a0audits. If I'm wrong so are those accounts. That gives him a problem.<\/p>\n

But then \u00a0this is a man whose firm was paid to write a report on my work in 2009<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0basically\u00a0concluded that there could be almost no tax avoidance because it appeared that the accounts of companies were being approved by HMRC. So then, as now, Deloitte defined tax avoidance as not existing if it\u00a0worked. That, of course, is a basic\u00a0category\u00a0error. Tax avoidance can of course only exist if it does work. Otherwise it's evasion. But Dodwell, deliberately I presume, misses that point.<\/p>\n

As he does many others, not least the obligation to disclose, if he is seeking the moral high ground, his conclicts of interest - like the fact his firm had written that report which was so\u00a0embarrassing\u00a0that everyone from the\u00a0government\u00a0on\u00a0ignored\u00a0it. And the fact that he has\u00a0personally\u00a0profited from tax avoidance. And that his\u00a0firm\u00a0has filed many DOTAS\u00a0schemes. And that it operates in all the world's major tax havens.<\/p>\n

When it comes to ethics Dodwell has a problem. It's basically that when he accuses me, Christian Aid and Action Aid of being unethical he's got to overcome the fact that his\u00a0claim\u00a0in support is that there is no transfer pricing issue, but the OECD says there is<\/a>. And he says there's no tax haven problem and the OECD says there is<\/a>. And there is no\u00a0problem\u00a0with\u00a0corporate\u00a0structuring for tax avoidance. And the OECD says there is<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Actually what Dodwell really has a problem with is telling the story as it really is. I have done that. My colleagues have done that. The world believes our evidence. We've told it as it is. And Dodwell is not doing so.\u00a0And when it comes to ethics that suggests the problem is all his.\u00a0As should be the full and\u00a0unambiguous\u00a0apology.<\/p>\n

In the meantime I leave you with a thought. Is Bill Dodwell now the face of a tax profession that realises it's time is up, and that is now living in a fear of the day when it cannot yield rich pickings by exploiting the world's tax systems, the democratic process and, as far as we're concerned and have evidenced, the world's poor? I think that might be the case. And like the editor of Taxation before him his unjustified claims are clear indication that he's lashing out as a result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tax\u00a0Journal\u00a0published\u00a0an\u00a0article\u00a0yesterday entitled ‘Urban myths and the recent tax debate’.\u00a0I think I should put The Tax Journal in context: it is a sister\u00a0publication\u00a0to Taxation, whose
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