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Sep 16 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Fun #taxnerdery here. It’s the US Embassy that says the congestion charge is a tax - because embassies are immune from taxes. TfL’s position is that it’s a charge for services, so there’s no immunity.
See Article 23 and 34 of the Vienna Convention, enacted into UK law under the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964.
Who’s right? It’s far from clear, but IMO the Americans. Being permitted to drive in the congestion zone is not really a “service”.
But it doesn’t really matter - you can’t start enforcement proceedings against an embassy, and so TfL wouldn’t be able to collect the money, even if it was a “tax”.

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More from @DanNeidle

Dan Neidle Profile picture
Sep 10
A quick thread on whether King Charles III will pay tax.
The King is not required to pay tax, because the Crown is simply not legally subject to tax.

Same goes for the (new) Prince of Wales.
In 2013 the Queen and the Prince of Wales voluntarily agreed to pay tax on their personal income/gains, and inheritance tax on private property EXCEPT going from one sovereign to the next.
Read 7 tweets
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Sep 5
The Government has introduced a windfall tax on oil/gas producers. But it has two flaws that mean it collects £5bn less than it should: taxpolicy.org.uk/windfallflaws
A more ambitious windfall tax, designed differently, could raise £30bn. Here's how it could work: taxpolicy.org.uk/2022/09/05/des…
These expand the points I made on Panorama this evening: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…
Read 4 tweets
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Aug 23
An update on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's secret libel letters. A 🧵 with some good news:

(or click here if you want the full story)

taxpolicy.org.uk/sra2/
Last month, the Chancellor's lawyers wrote to me, accusing me of libel and requiring me to withdraw my allegation that he'd lied.

They claimed their letters were confidential, and couldn't be published. This was tosh. I published the letters.

taxpolicy.org.uk/2022/07/22/let…
I’d been aware of SLAPPs – “Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation” – where a wealthy and/or famous person uses the threat of libel proceedings to shut down debate...
Read 13 tweets
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Aug 20
What is tax avoidance? I've written a short FAQ.

taxpolicy.org.uk/2022/08/20/avo…

Quick thread:
There isn’t a single legal definition of “tax avoidance”. If there was, life would be easy: we’d pass a law saying that if you do tax avoidance, it doesn’t work, you pay lots of extra tax, and maybe go to jail as well.
Why isn’t there a definition? Because it’s too difficult.

But the informal rule is that tax avoidance is using “loopholes” or other features of the tax system to save tax (“obtain a tax advantage”) in a way that wasn’t intended by Parliament.
Read 5 tweets
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Aug 20
VAT stupidity part II: the threshold when a business becomes subject to UK VAT is £85k - higher than almost anywhere else in the world.

The result? Small businesses artificially limit their growth below £85k. This chart is incredible: Image
Cutting the VAT registration threshold would be intensely unpopular. But it would also be right.

Credit to @Sam_Dumitriu and the @ASI for being one of the very few willing to make this argument publicly: adamsmith.org/blog/is-vat-to…
It's an even more serious problems in countries with a large informal/shadow economy - these are from Thailand and India: ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Aug 20
It's often said we have 6,000 pages of tax legislation because modern corporate life is so complicated.

But then why do the VAT rules for sweet shops look like this?
Most of the complexity comes because we (meaning politicians and people who vote for them) create tax exemptions for things we like (in this case: cakes).
Meaning endless rules and caselaw carefully defining what is and isn't a cake, and anti-avoidance to stop other things being dressed up as cake.
Read 4 tweets

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