Lots of people asking about the Government's prospects for recovering the £120m from Barrowman/Mone/their companies

Short answer: I don't know. I'm not an insolvency specialist. No clue how the £120m was paid out to them from PPE Medpro

So I have no technical answer

But... (The background: PPE Medpro itself is in administration, with almost no cash to its name. So no money is coming from it - and the question is whether the Government can pursue the money elsewhere.)

Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company, PPE Medpro, has just been ordered to refund the Government £122m from a PPE contract.

There are two very odd things about PPE Medpro that may affect the odds of the Government ever getting that £122m...

Thread: The first odd thing: there two PPE Medpros.

One incorporated in the UK. The other incorporated in the Isle of Man. Both Barrowman-linked companies.

When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate.

How did this work? And was it tax avoidance?

🧵 I've been working on the story with @Gabriel_Pogrund and the Sunday Times for some time. Their story is here: thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

Is Andy Burnham right? Is there "definitely a case" for reintroducing the 50p tax rate? The top ("additional") rate was 50p from 2010 to 2013, on income over £150k.

The additional rate was cut to 45p from 2013.

NEW: Britain’s fiercest libel firm, Carter-Ruck, acted for the $4bn OneCoin fraud and threatened its critics. Now they’re being prosecuted at the SDT.

Their response? An anonymity order to cover it up. But Carter-Ruck just lost that order - and it's all coming out.

Thread
We’re publishing everything - the background, the filings, the timeline: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/09/18/car…

What happens when you pay a fortune for tax advice from someone, and the advice turns out to be incompetent? And HMRC demands the tax back plus penalties?

If you guessed "you get all your money back" then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Dodgy R&D tax firm ZLX made large research and development tax credit claims for its clients, charging a 30% fee. Often these claims had no legitimate basis

Every second a Labour MP spends campaigning for a wealth tax is a second that could be spent campaigning for real tax reform that could make the tax system fairer, boost economic growth and (unlike the wealth tax) actually happen.

A thread: There will never be a wealth tax in the UK. Anyone who's looked at the evidence knows it would take years to implement, would hit investment, damage growth and kill jobs.

The evidence: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-…

Last Tuesday, I awoke to an email from the High Court, rejecting an attempt to silence me with an interim injunction

This came as a surprise, because I'd no idea anyone had applied for an injunction. Even though this was an "on notice" injunction application

A quick WTF 🧵 Longer version of this thread, with copies of the injunction application and the court's response.

(Spoiler: it wasn't a very favourable response)

taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/09/04/set…

The Telegraph says Ms Rayner sought advice from "a conveyancer and two experts in trust law".

So how could they all get the law wrong? A 🧵
with some speculation.

(Pure speculation, but based on my experience of how clients and advisers behave.) Some possible scenarios:

It's very unusual for someone to pay the wrong amount of stamp duty when they're receiving tax advice.

There are probably three possibilities:

(1) Ms Rayner got the law wrong
(2) She didn't take the right advice
(3) She didn't disclose all the facts to the law firm. If it's the law firm's fault, then hard to blame Ms Rayner.

If it's scenario 2 or 3, then completely fair to blame her

Given Ms Rayner's position, it's reasonable to expect full transparency as to what happened

Every Monday am, we publish an updated list of every UK plc that's failed to file its accounts on time.

Sometimes a company is on the list because of Companies House delay/error.

Often, the companies are troubled, bust, or incompetent.

But sometimes it's just fraud: Randomly clicking through the list, it's pretty obvious which are just innocent errors, incompetence, etc... and the frauds quickly stand out.

Meet Herran Finance plc.

How much tax do we pay in the UK, compared to other countries?

This much: Or if we order it by income/payroll taxes instead:

Hugely important libel victory for the Guardian vs actor/director Noel Clarke. There are "strong grounds to believe he is a serial abuser of women".

https://twitter.com/PaulLewis/status/1958828363977503008

Equally important, even if the Guardian hadn't been able to establish its accusations were true (a high burden) it would still have prevailed, as its publication was in the public interest:

We reported last month that the widely-cited Henley & Partners migration reports have numerous anomalies and may be fabricated.

There's a new report in Spears - the magazine for "ultra high net worths and the people who advise them" - which makes fabrication look more and more likely. The Spear's report is here: spearswms.com/wealth/controv…

Reports suggest Labour may introduce capital gains tax on home sales in the Autumn Budget. It sounds like an easy revenue raiser - but the evidence shows it would slash transactions, gum up housing chains, and could even collect less tax overall.

Thread: A longer version of this thread is here, with calculations, references, and a discussion of the better alternative: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/08/21/lab…

A company called "Nexus Network" wrote to my personal email wanting long-term advice on "UK Regulatory Dynamics".

I've never heard of "UK Regulatory Dynamics". It's certainly not my field; I'm not sure it's anyone's field.

And Nexus Network looks rather "off". The email gives Nexus's address as 20-22 Wenlock Road, London, N1 7GU, UK, but the Nexus website says it’s Aldwych House, London WC2A 2AZ. Neither email nor website gave the name of the company, which is (1) weird and (2) an offence.

The Budget inheritance tax changes raised £500m/year, but hit small/businesses unfairly. And also allowed much IHT avoidance to continue

A new proposal does the impossible: protects small farms/businesses, hits avoidance, AND raises twice as much revenue.

How?

🧵: A longer version of this thread is here, with footnotes and links to sources: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/08/15/fix…

Just a reminder that an individual's national insurance payments do not fund their State pension.

The average person's national insurance payments cover about half the cost of their state pension: The table is from the Pensions Policy Institute
pensionspolicyinstitute.org.uk/media/1crf4ox5…

Wealth tax advocates almost never deal with the actual objections to their proposal. There is good evidence that it will hit growth, employment and investment (particularly foreign investment).

https://twitter.com/garyseconomics/status/1954452662818119735

I covered this in a thread here

https://twitter.com/danneidle/status/1947569883878654071

Just announced: the UK's most famous libel firm, Carter-Ruck, is being prosecuted before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for recklessly enabling a $4bn fraud

It's astonishing how reckless Carter-Ruck was - likely causing $$$ more to be lost to fraudsters

The full story: The original reporting on all this was from Ed Siddons and Matthew Valencia for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-1…

Slightly surprised to discover I've been referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes.
My actions are apparently comparable with the recruitment of child soldiers.

The full document: taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/ass…