New polling evidence from Tax Policy Associates and WeThink shows that half the public doesn’t understand a basic principle of income tax: the way that tax rates apply to income above a threshold.

Thread! If you live in England, earn £50,269, and get a £1 pay rise, you’ll pay an additional 28p in tax – 20% income tax and 8% national insurance.

Here we go again. Another “this is a good thing, therefore there should be a VAT exemption” argument. These arguments are deeply dumb:

https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1780134589027033213

There is well established evidence, from statistical analyses of hundreds of VAT changes, that VAT cuts on a single product aren’t passed on to consumers. taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/07/12/vat…

The Post Office's top priority is covering-up its mistakes. Thread on what happened when we identified that the Post Office's compensation payments to thousands of postmasters were a tax disaster. The Post Office scandal has had three separate phases, with three separate scandals.

The Post Office has finally stopped intimidating postmasters into silence; but it’s too late. The latest on the "without prejudice" scandal - quick thread: When the Post Office made settlement offers to postmasters under its "HSS" scheme, it included this paragraph saying that postmasters couldn't discuss the offer with anyone:

There's a campaign claiming that you can legally stop paying tax to protest the war in Gaza, or even that it is illegal for you to pay tax.

It's obviously weird nonsense. But what's weirder is that the claim has its origins in far-right racist groups in the US.

Thread: This is the kind of fringe thing we normally wouldn’t comment on, for fear we're just giving it further publicity. But now we've seen disappointingly credulous pieces in the Telegraph and @novaramedia , we thought it would be helpful to comment.

There isn’t a single country in the world that spends more on public services than the UK without taxing the average worker more heavily: Can we raise more tax by solely taxing the wealthy/companies/closing down avoidance?

Sure. And I’ve written about how. But it’s chicken feed in fiscal terms. If you want to move the dial, the average person has to pay more tax.

The Sunday Times has a report on the poor state of NHS infrastructure. We polled public attitudes to paying more tax to provide the NHS with additional funding. The results are unexpected. We first asked a simple question: "Do you think taxes should be increased to pay for additional NHS funding?":

The Lib Dems are proposing a 4% tax on FTSE 100 buybacks. They say it will raise £2bn. They've made an elementary error; in reality the tax could raise almost nothing.

Quick thread: The Lib Dems haven't published their methodology for the £2bn figure, but it's reasonably clear all they've done is multiply 4% by the approximately £50bn volume of buybacks in 2022 and 2023.

A thread on the Budget tax cut nobody's talking about, why we need more, and why this chart is a disgrace. Until last week’s Budget, someone earning £50k with three children under 18 faced a marginal tax rate of 71%. Sometimes higher.

That's the tower on the left of this chart:

A very strange High Court decision was just published. It reveals that an unknown person or company is engaged in an international strategic litigation campaign to block international tax and transparency initiatives, and is going to great lengths to remain anonymous. On the face of it, this case is about FATCA.

It used to be easy to evade tax on your income. Open an offshore bank account, put your money in that, and HMRC would likely never find out.

non-dom abolition: there are now more details available: gov.uk/government/pub… In short:

- true end to non-dom regime from 6 April 2025

Live-tweeting the Budget, but only the interesting bits. "Permanent cuts in taxation".

Here's what the OBS said about the 2% national insurance cut in the Autumn:

This is a deeply unserious article. Who are the wealthy people who pay a low effective rate of tax? The answer is not "bankers". Bankers earnings/bonuses are taxed at 13.8% employer NI then a 47% marginal rate of income tax/employee NI.

So overall effective rate of about 54%. Very limited deductions are available to reduce this.

We've more evidence of fraud by a Douglas Barrowman company, and a potential explanation for how PPE Medpro made a profit of £60m which doesn't appear in its accounts. Our new report - thread: It starts with a mystery. Why does Barrowman have seven "shadow companies" - offshore companies which duplicate the names of other, mostly UK, companies:

The whole Rayner thing is a nice illustration of where tax complexity comes from. The rules around CGT exemption for the main residence are complicated.

Why? Because of the political choices we make.

Intriguing rumours coming from the Treasury that Jeremy Hunt is considering abolishing the non-dom rules.

It might just be politics - stealing Labour's clothes. But there is a principled Conservative case for radical non-dom reform.

Thread: The non-dom rules mean (very broadly) that a foreigner living in the UK who is classified as having a non-UK domicile isn't taxed on their foreign income and gains, unless they bring ("remit") the proceeds into the UK.

Did Angela Rayner @AngelaRayner fail to pay CGT on her house sale?

In short, the answer is: maybe, it depends, but the amounts involved are small.

The longer version follows below... Here's what appears to have happened, based on press reports and Angela Rayner's statement:

I gather that the Loan Charge Action Group has just instructed Andrew Thornhill KC.

This is surprising, given that he's one of those responsible for the loan schemes that created this whole disaster. Thornhill collaborated in the 90s with Paul Baxendale-Walker. PBW is probably both the most ludicrous and the most dangerous figure the UK tax profession has ever produced.

The Post Office has published the letter its CEO, Nick Read, wrote to the Government begging it not to pass legislation reversing all the Horizon convictions.

There are several very odd features to this correspondence. First: The Post Office has previously said it has identified over 700 convictions in which Horizon evidence might have featured.

Now suddenly Read says over half of these convictions were in fact unrelated to Horizon. Huh?

A thread on how I accidentally blundered into an invisible campaign to censor the internet, and remove inconvenient news stories from Google... I wrote recently about a fraudulent attempt to use US copyright law to take down an article I’d written which was critical of a fake PR firm, “Mogul Press”.

We've an exclusive report on a serious loophole in the Lobbying Act which means that a lobbyist acting for foreign PPE clients didn't have to register their activity.
However, the loophole's effects go much wider.
Quick thread: @Gabriel_Pogrund and @Direthoughts at the Sunday Times had a report that a lobbying consultancy founded by former Tory MP Brooks Newmark had lobbied on behalf of foreign PPE suppliers.