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Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Sep 24, 2024 • 22 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X

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Which MP is the highest earner? Who receives the highest donations? Who takes the most foreign trips? We've just launched an interactive map that lets you explore all this and more.

You can jump straight to the map here, or read on for examples of how to use it: taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/09/24/map…

Changing the "shading" options and you can colour the map by level of earnings:

Or value of foreign visits:

And you can click "world map" to see the countries they visited:

Other shading options reveal which MPs employ family members:

... the level of donations...

Or gifts (a "gift" being for a personal benefit; a "donation" being for political campaigning):

Then you can zoom into the shaded map and click individual constituencies to see all the details for that MP:

And we mean *all* the details - all the information we can find, in one place:

Alternatively, enter text in the "category" box and you can highlight all MPs receiving (for example) trade union funding:

or all donations from "members clubs":

Or enter text in the "donor" box and you can highlight all MPs receiving gifts/donations from one individual (this is Waheed Alli). Note that you may need to zoom in to see small constituencies

This is a brilliant piece of coding for which I can take no credit - it's all thanks to our fantastic collaborator M. He's done something amazing, for no pay or reward of any kind, and doesn't even want to be credited.

Data comes from the fantastic Parliament API and Companies House API. The creation of APIs by government services was a remarkable step in open government for which everyone involved deserves huge amounts of credit. There's a fascinating paper on the history here: instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/…

There are other websites presenting much of the same data differently.

Open Innovations have an impressive hex map, with lots of textual data as well. More sophisticated than ours in many ways, but lacks the Companies House linking. And a different presentation - some people prefer hex maps; we prefer geographical ones. open-innovations.org/projects/RMFI/

This from Sky and Tortoise Media is brilliant for looking at individual MPs. news.sky.com/story/westmins…

They Work For You has a text-based index, which (invaluably) shows changes over time. theyworkforyou.com/regmem/

There is an indexed text search here, from a husband and wife team. membersinterests.org.uk

Two quick caveats:

First, the underlying data is often poor quality - there are many errors, particularly around company names and donor names, which are frequently misspelt. We'll be writing more about this soon.

Second, I've no idea how popular this will be, and whether it will be viewed by 20 people or 20,000. So our server may or may not cope... please bear with us if you experience problems.

We don't accept donations. But, if you find the map useful, please consider making a donation to the amazing charity Bridge The Gap, which provides free high quality tax advice to the elderly and people on low incomes. bridge-the-gap.org.uk

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More from @DanNeidle

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Apr 18

Our new report: Richard Tice signed accounts wrongly claiming £98,000 of tax exemptions

A 🧵 with the evidence:

Normal companies pay corporation tax. So, when they pay dividends, their corporate shareholders don't pay tax again. The dividends are exempt.

REITs are different. They don't pay corporation tax. So dividends received by Tisun One, Two, Three, Four were not exempt.

Richard Tice applied for his Quidnet company to become a REIT. It then paid no tax.

But the price was that the four "Tisun" companies holding shares in Quidnet REIT had to pay tax on their dividends. They didn't.

(here's the accounts from one of them)

Read 25 tweets

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Apr 13

I hope @Nigel_Farage retracts this false statement.

I did not say Mr Tice paid the full amount. I said we don’t know what tax Mr Tice and his offshore trust paid.

And the “little bit more” is an invention.

I’ve gone out of my way in the past to defend Mr Farage from unsubstantiated accusations of tax avoidance. (And got slated for it from certain quarters.)

I’d expect to be treated fairly in return.

Here’s what we know and what we don’t know about Mr Tice’s taxes.

Haven’t had a single tax adviser say we’re getting this wrong.taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/04/13/ric…

Read 4 tweets

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Apr 11

The deputy leader of Reform UK, Richard Tice, owns a property company - Quidnet REIT.

From 2020 to 2022 it paid Tice and his trust £600k in dividends. Quidnet should have paid £120k of tax on those dividends. It didn't.

A 🧵 with evidence from the company's own filings:

From 10 August 2018 to 9 August 2021. Quidnet was a REIT: an investment fund that invests in real estate.

Just as an employer is required to withhold PAYE tax from wages, a REIT is required to withhold 20% income tax (20%) from its dividends, and pay it to HMRC.

Combining stock exchange announcements and Companies House reporting shows that Quidnet paid around £600,000 in REIT dividends to Mr Tice and his offshore trust.

(methodology in the report, linked below)

Read 15 tweets

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Mar 18

More tax nonsense from "influencer" Samuel Leeds.

"I just sold my castle. On paper, I lost about £3.5m. But here is the part most people will not understand. It is also a tax write-off... the loss can be set-off against profits"

No it isn't, and no you can't.

Oh dear.

One of the great stupidities of the UK tax system is that capital losses can only be used against capital gains.

If Mr Leeds made a £3.5m trading profit in the same year as his £3.5m capital loss, he is still taxed on the £3.5m trading loss.

No "offset".

The £3.5m loss is only useful if Mr Leeds makes a £3.5m capital gain (now or in the future).

Slight problem is that he makes a lot of money selling overpriced trading courses, but isn't so good at making capital gains.

In the lingo, the capital loss is "stranded".

Read 9 tweets

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Mar 17

Companies House has now alerted all five million UK companies of the vulnerability that let anyone, anywhere in the world, access the private dashboard of any company.

Meaning: view confidential personal information, modify company/director details, even file accounts.

I am a little concerned that this is minimising what happened:

- Saying the vulnerability "could only have been exploited by a logged-in user performing a specific set of actions" downplays the ease of bad actors gaining a Companies House login.

- The "specific set of actions" sounds like it was something very obscure, when actually it was just pressing the "back" key four times.

five million companies * a five months vulnerability = likely lots of people discovered it.

Was it ignored or exploited?

Read 7 tweets

Dan Neidle

@DanNeidle

Mar 16

Companies House has put out a statement confirming that, for five months, every company in the UK was vulnerable to the simple exploit we identified on Friday. It enabled anyone in the world to view and change their company details.

If you haven't seen the exploit yet, this video is pretty shocking.

John Hewitt, of Ghost Mail Ltd, who found it, gives me a demonstration.

He "hacks" the system by ⚠️ ⚠️ pressing the back key four times ⚠️ ⚠️

I basically just splutter incoherently.