The Guardian has reported that:
Labour has appointed an expert panel to advise the party on ways to tackle tax avoidance following its plan to reap £5bn from a crackdown on tax dodgers.
The party's shadow financial secretary, James Murray, said the independent group would also advise on how to modernise the tax authority, which has come under fire from MPs for failing to claw back an “eye-watering” amount of owed tax. He said the panel offered decades of experience.
Sir Edward Troup, a former Treasury special adviser on tax and head of HMRC, will be joined on the panel by Bill Dodwell, former tax director of the Office for Tax Simplification and a retired senior accountant at Deloittes.
The four-person group will also include the Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, a former chair of parliament's public accounts committee, and Mike Bracken, founding partner at the consultancy Public Digital, and founder and former executive director of the UK Government Digital Service.
I should note that I know three of the four: the exception is Mike Bracken.
There are a number of things to note.
The first is that this panel is a long way short of being an Office for Tax Responsibility, which is what we really need to monitor the preparation of tax gap data and to undertake tax spillover assessments to really understand just what is not functioning properly within the UK tax system. This panel does, in that case, fall seriously short of a plan for what is needed.
Second, if this group is meant to tackle the tax gap, 56% of which arises amongst small businesses according to HMRC's own data, picking Ed Troup, who has only worked with large corporate clients, and Bill Dodwell, who did likewise at Deloitte, and Margaret Hodge, who has no tax experience at all - as she once willingly told me - is not the way to go. Nor is picking a data specialist when HMRC's Making Tax Digital programme is not an answer to any known question.
We need an Office for Tax Responsibility. But what we also need is that people with experience of the real problems that we face should advise on solutions.
The Federation of Small Business should be advising.
So should a small accounting practitioner.
HMRC staff need to be represented.
And given the history of the impact of the tax justice movement, it too needs to be on board so long as the representative knows something about tax, and right now, almost none of those engaged in those campaigns have any actual tax experience at all.
Then, this panel needs to ask the awkward questions:
- Is the tax gap data right?
- How do we know?
- What is motivating abuse?
- Why has the small business tax gap got very much worse of late?
- To what extent does HMRC's own behaviour encourage the tax gap?
- Is the tax system riddled with loopholes that could be closed, with ease, and how could that be done?
- Is there a problem with the ease of access to limited liability in the UK?
- What is the plan to co-ordinate action on all these issues, and others?
- What is the budget for this panel to commission work to assist the delivery of advice they supply to Rachel Reeves?
We need the tax system to work better than it does.
To achieve that, we need a stronger panel than Rachel Reeves is appointing, and that panel needs to have teeth as an Office for Tax Responsibility.
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Call for Prof. Murphy!!
Richard,
My understanding is to put it politley that the Federation of Small Business’s, how shall I put it politley, isnt an organisation you might wish to be involved in consultation.
I suggest that small business’s deserve proper representation and the FSB isnt up to the task
Who could do it then?
“expert panel to advise the party on ways to tackle tax avoidance”
Cursory consideration of who is on it (e.g. one of the big 4 insultancies – sideline – advising companies on tax dodging – ooops sorry “tax efficiency” – that’s what I meant honest). It is, as always, a collection of “safe pairs of hands”, outcomes will have been decided. Twas always thus & always will be with LINO & the Tories. A combo of window dressing/propaganda/electioneering (LINO pretending to be “serious on tax, tax avoidance & tax collection”…….assembled huddled masses burst out with laughter).
The panel is no more capable of asking awkward questions than Caligula’s horse. Indeed, having said horse appointed as a sentor makes more sense than the current panel line-up.
But you can be sure the MSM will lap it up.
@ Mike Parr
“Grifting in LINO the Trojan horse way to go!”
When they run out of untrue opinions to legislate into law the Tories have a deeply dishonest and nasty ploy of co-opting other peoples good ideas in order to discredit and destroy them.
Osborne’s despicable and dishonest stealing of the important and honourable work done by the real Living Wage Group to rebrand the minimum wage as “the Living wage” when it was no such thing being an excellent example.
This expert panel on tax fraud sounds uncomfortably like the same thing.
As I often told my undergrad and postgrad students over the years, if you need to hold an inquiry or set up an advisory or expert panel and don’t want any ‘shocks’ or difficult issues to arise appoint retired insiders. They know enough to produce a decent report but also enough to know not to go so far as upsetting the status quo too much. In short, they’ll identify some of the rougher edges of policy and practice but leave the rest undisturbed. Just what Starmer and Reeves would want, both being insiders themselves.
More to come on this very soon…
Exactly; these appointments are simply cosmetic. No real change, nothing of any substance, will issue forth from this, and that will be by design. Labour have been assembled to maintain the status quo and their clear intent is to do just that.
The Chartered Institute of Taxation, Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, Association of Taxation Technicians, for starters.
Edward Troup isn’t necessarily the best person to be there, given his, ahem, interesting statements about the nature of tax prior to becoming a Permanent Secretary at HMRC.
I will be highlighting those very soon….
Thank you and well said, Richard.
I can imagine that, in the background, the City, including former colleagues, are involved.
Hodge, eh?! What an interesting case. Every accusation that she levels at the City can be thrown back at her (and her extended family) with exorbitant interest. For some reason, every autumn she’s invited to speak at the City’s big financial crime conference. She’s good at throwing politically motivated mud that rarely stands forensic scrutiny. I’m not saying the City is clean. Far from that. However, people like Hodge…
I used to work with her
For a number of reasons I have not for some time
I know no tax justice campaigners who will
I believe he is barred from the Tax Justice Network
he /she ? who are you talking about?
What are you referring to?
“I used to work with HER
For a number of reasons I have not for some time
I know no tax justice campaigners who will
I believe HE is barred from the Tax Justice Network”
It looks as if you started off referrring to Hodge and then she morphed into a man.
Sorry..
I beIieve you meant to say Professor that “…She is barred from the Tax Justice Network.”?
Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge said yesterday that “At least £36bn was lost to the Treasury last year because of tax avoidance. And this is a very conservative estimate. This is known as the tax gap and it’s a scandal that we must attack.”
In 2012, The Telegraph reported that “Margaret Hodge’s family company pays just 0.01pc tax on £2.1bn of business generated in the UK”.
I don’t think that makes her a very good panel expert, and also explains why “she did everything she could to prevent Labour winning an election” (in 2019); Corbyn said he wanted to “‘chase down’ tax dodgers”.
Sources
Margaret Hodge on Twitter https://twitter.com/margarethodge/status/1777740853001220298
“The Tories let tax dodgers go unchecked. Labour won’t put up with it”, Margaret Hodge, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/09/tories-tax-dodgers-labour-non-dom-loopholes-rachel-reeves-uk
Margaret Hodge’s family company pays just 0.01pc tax on £2.1bn of business generated in the UK, The Telegraph (2012)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businesslatestnews/9668396/Margaret-Hodges-family-company-pays-just-0.01pc-tax-on-2.1bn-of-business-generated-in-the-UK.html
“Margaret Hodge admits she did everything she could to prevent Labour winning an election and would have done whatever it took to stop Corbyn becoming prime minister”, Twitter, https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1730607362577158398
“Jeremy Corbyn: Labour will ‘chase down’ tax dodgers”, The Guardian (2019)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/06/jeremy-corbyn-labour-will-chase-down-tax-dodgers
For many reasons I have cncern about Hodge as well as Troup, just reported
And as for Bill – he was senior tax partner at Deloitte who were not as clean as the driven snow…
What is Reeves doing?
“What is Reeves doing? ”
Old chap I would have thought that is pretty obvious…”Let’s pretend” – as per “Watch with Rachel”.
Teacher: “Today LINO children we are going to play “Let’s pretend we are doing something about taxation”…
Teacher: ” Yes Margaret you had your hand up first”
Maggie: “Please Miss it is only “let’s pretend isn’t it – we are not really going to do anything are we?”
Teacher: “oh silly girl – of course not but we need to pretend we are so what look-good & feel-good scheme can you think up”
🙂
Maintaining the status quo. I’ve no doubt she sees that as the core of her job.
Thank you, Ian.
There are more skeletons rattling in the Hodge cupboard, e.g. https://www.opensecrets.org.za/unaccountable-00001-dame-margaret-hodge-mp-a-very-british-apartheid-profiteer/ and https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/with-a-past-like-hers-margaret-hodge-might-show-a-bit-more-humility-10098871.html. There’s one I can’t find about the use of child labour in India.
As Richard quoted in another post today ““If you think the world needs to be changed you don’t appoint Edward Troup to that job,” said Jolyon Maugham QC, an expert in taxation law.” https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/11/edward-troup-advising-tax-havens-leading-hmrs-panama-papers-inquiry
The makeup of this panel suggests that LINO are not really serious in tacking the issues.
The excercise of chumocracy and the in tent usual suspects – as Ivan points out – will be expert only in kicking the can down the road.
If this exemplifies what Labour in office will do, then we are in for a futile five years.
Without the rise of a third force in UK politics, on the leftish side, I can only see the door opening widen for the Trumpists and Faragists in Reform. If Trump is elected in late 2024, an avalanche of money will pour into the UK from the far right, and the media will increasingly reflect their views. The stasis with a hole in the centre that is LINO is a throw of the dice by a complacent establishment, doomed to failure by its ineptitude.
Thank you, John.
I don’t disagree, but caveat that it’s not just Trump Republicans. US neo cons and neo liberals and their UK allies, including a former spook (later master of a Cambridge college) and head of the armed forces, can and do mobilise money and activists. That preceded the election of Trump.
It should not be forgotten that Farage became associated with Murdoch in the early 1990s, leading to the Farage faction ousting party leader Alan Sked in the mid 1990s, and Paul Staines / Guido Fawkes became associated with Murdoch in the late 1980s, after Staines campaigned for a consolidation of right wing forces and the likes of the National Front, BNP, Combat 18 etc. to be the Tory party’s muscle on the streets. Murdoch thought that these relationships allowed him to drag UK politics in a direction favourable to him and exert pressure indirectly. It was hoped that Leveson II would have shed light on that. Corbyn wanted that to happen, painting a target on his back.
Mr Griffin, if I may: “Without the rise of a third force in UK politics, on the leftish side”
Labelling a political group that wants change…. left or right is unwise for a range of reasons. As Col Smithers noted – it paints a target on your back.
An alternative approach is to come out with narratives such as “Uk citizens deserve warm comfortable homes” or “UK citizens deserve clean rivers and seas”.
We can have a discussion on modalities: how to deliver two such societal goods (& others) – but it would be a brave politico that came out with “I opposed clean rivers & seas – cos its.. left wing, right whinge etc…and it costs far too much……and we will improve regulation “….cue voters curlng up with laughter coupled to contempt..
LINO’s “we are going to stick to fiscal rules” ain’t going to get people into the voting booths and putting a tick next to the LINO candidate. By contrast, politicians that say: see that river over there – the one with turds floating down it on a regular basis – the one with no fish…. we are going to fix that………and the UK has the money to do that… & here’s how”.
Narratives that mean something, to voters & which can be delivered.
Everyone deserves to live without the fear that their next meal may not happen.
I have read your Tax Report . Very impressive. I thank you for the time and effort you have put in in creating the document. I believe it forms the foundation of a fair society rather like the one I benefited from as a youing man.
Much comment was made about the money given to the commercial banks by the B of E. I have not seen much about that recently. Is it still relevant?
Yes
Totally
I should do a video on it