{"id":30736,"date":"2015-09-25T06:31:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T05:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=30736"},"modified":"2015-09-25T06:31:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T05:31:57","slug":"oxfords-tax-gap-deniers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2015\/09\/25\/oxfords-tax-gap-deniers\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxford’s tax gap deniers"},"content":{"rendered":"

There's a letter in today's Guardian from Prof Mike Devereux of the\u00a0Oxford Centre for Business Taxation. In it he claims that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Zoe Williams (G2<\/a>, 23 September) claims that taxation has \u201ca curious void where its academics should be\u201d, and that Richard Murphy is \u201cby a mile, the major thinker\u201d. Both claims are far wide of the mark.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I made the first claim: I think it's true. I did not make the second, and would not: I was a little surprised by it. I think the third is open to debate.<\/p>\n

Mike continues:<\/p>\n

There is a wealth of serious academic work on taxation from the world\u2019s leading universities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not on the tax gap there is not Mike and that was what I was saying. And as if evidence was needed the letter added:<\/p>\n

Murphy\u2019s own contributions are often highly questionable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope Mike takes a slightly more broad-minded with students who wish to consider\u00a0counter-arguments to his views. His evidence to support his claim is:<\/p>\n

To take one important example mentioned in the article, the \u201ctax gap\u201d is a dubious concept<\/strong> that requires a comparison of actual tax revenues with what HMRC calls the \u201camount of tax that should, in theory, be collected\u201d. It is hard to reconcile Murphy\u2019s estimate of a gap of \u00a3122bn with such a definition, and it is wishful thinking to believe that anything like such sums could be collected if only HMRC were tougher, or if companies were more ethical.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I added the emphasis, because it is important. I think we can presume as a consequence of what Mike Devereux is saying that he thinks:<\/p>\n

1) We cannot work out how much tax should be collected in the economy, so that<\/p>\n

2) There is no such thing as the tax gap, which means \u00a0by implication that<\/p>\n

3) There can, therefore, be no such thing as tax avoidance or tax evasion, and<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0Even if there were such things there is nothing we can do about them, so that<\/p>\n

5) Any number I cared to offer on this issue must be wrong, meaning by implication that<\/p>\n

6) HMRC are wrong to also suggest any such number, which means that<\/p>\n

7) HMRC are also mistaken to consider this 'dubious' concept, and<\/p>\n

8) Action taken to address it will be futile.<\/p>\n

This is an opinion largely reinforced by Devereux's conclusion, which is:<\/p>\n

If Jeremy Corbyn wants to raise significantly more tax revenue, then he will have to raise taxes, and not just rely on preventing evasion and avoidance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That does seem rather specific: it seems to me that to link the claim to Jeremy Corbyn (which I would not do) is quite erroneous: Mike could have substituted the name George Osborne for Jeremy Corbyn and there would have been no change at all in the sense of what was being said, so I think we can safely conclude that the letter is about politics, and not debate in that case.<\/p>\n

And this is, perhaps not surprising. The\u00a0Oxford Centre for Business Taxation is heavily sponsored by large companies<\/a>, whose behaviour Mike appears to defend\u00a0in his letter, and whose behaviour I have heard Jeremy Corbyn criticise. And Mike is a known friend of the cause of those companies. In 2012 he wrote an article for the FT entitled<\/a><\/p>\n

The best reform of corporation tax would be its abolition<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, let's loop right back to the beginning of Mike's letter where he said:<\/p>\n

Zoe Williams (G2<\/a>, 23 September) claims that taxation has \u201ca curious void where its academics should be\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

There is a wealth of serious academic work on taxation from the world\u2019s leading universities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not that I can see Mike.<\/p>\n

I can see denial of there being an issue to address.<\/p>\n

I can see political opinion.<\/p>\n

I can see a link being made to the interests of large corporations who happen to be your department's sponsors when I have made clear that they are only a small part of the tax gap issue.<\/p>\n

And I can even see an ad hominem.<\/p>\n

But what I do not see is the evidence of the serious academic research on the issue. And that's what Zoe Williams reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a letter in today’s Guardian from Prof Mike Devereux of the\u00a0Oxford Centre for Business Taxation. In it he claims that: Zoe Williams (G2, 23
 Read the full article…<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-tax-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30736","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=30736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}