Everything about this viral tweet is wrong.

No: the government hasn’t raided the National Insurance Fund.

No: the surplus can’t be used for anything you like, without loading our children with debt/taxes.

Here’s why. 🧵 First, that "surplus" is there for a reason: as a buffer to cover pensions/social security for an aging population. The Government Actuary estimates that the fund will be exhausted by 2043/44

Take money out of the fund now, and we hit a fiscal crisis in 20 years' time

We reported two years ago on an outrageous "tax avoidance" scheme (which we thought was fraud) which split one business into 10,000 companies, each claiming small business tax reliefs, and hiring Filipino directors off Facebook to prevent HMRC investigating. What's worse, the scheme was enabled by an opinion from Giles Goodfellow KC. He should have known the scheme was fraudulent. He certainly shouldn't have said the scheme worked as a matter of law

We published the KC instructions/opinion here: taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/07/04/kc/

Henley & Partners’ wealth migration reports have been reported all over the world, both to prove both that there's a massive exodus of wealth from the UK and that there isn't.

Our forensic review finds the data riddled with anomalies - and in key places looks fabricated:

Our full review is here, with the data and methodology set out in full, and links to the spreadsheet and GitHub with the working: taxpolicy.org.uk/henley-partner…

A UK wealth tax sounds simple: "tax the super‑rich, fund public services"

But it's not.

Our 16,000 word deep‑dive shows revenues are fragile, it puts growth, investment and jobs at risk, and there's no revenue before 2029.

Here’s the evidence: This thread is a *very* short summary of our full report, which is here:

The full report contains all sources and references, linked where possible, plus additional detail of the arguments and counter-arguments.taxpolicy.org.uk/uk-wealth-tax-…

Today's little mystery: how come three of Lord Ashcroft's companies haven't filed their accounts for last year?


These aren't dormant forgotten-about companies. It's an active business, with turnovers of millions of pounds

Douglas Barrowman made a fortune from selling tax avoidance schemes. When the schemes failed, his companies aggressively sold their clients another avoidance scheme which supposed rescued them from the first scheme.

It was all a scam. A disaster for the clients. We reported on this last year, and said there seemed enough evidence to prosecute Barrowman and his team for defrauding HMRC and their own clients.

It's not often you accuse a billionaire of fraud and don't hear a peep out of his lawyers. Guess why. taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/01/18/bar…

Iain Clifford Stamp runs a "sovereign citizen" scam which promises people he'll magically eliminate their mortgage and other debt (for a hefty fee).

A judgment on Wednesday shows justice is catching up with him. Thread. Iain Clifford Stamp is a "sovereign citizen": a weird pseudo-legal conspiracy theory that believes the entire legal and financial system is a delusion which will disappear (and give you free money) if you say the magic words.

Good Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign…

A few people have asked me what I think of this list. Some of the items are realistic. Some (including the big ticket items) are not. Some are too vague to assess.

https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1942306996834951463

Significant sums can be raised by raising capital gains tax, BUT you have to reform the tax significantly, in particular make sure you only tax real gains, not inflationary gains. Otherwise you'll knacker investment and lose tax, not raise it. See taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/10/16/how…

Last year Andrea* received this from HMRC. £9,595 penalties for not filing a tax return

But Andrea suffered from mental health difficulties for years, earning almost no income. She owed zero tax

Over the last 5 years, 600,000 penalties have been issued to people like Andrea Our full report on Andrea* and the 600,000 is here, with all the data and references.



And thread below.

*Andrea of course not her real nametaxpolicy.org.uk/hmrc-late-fili…

A 'tax adviser' pushing smears seeded by Russian disinformation - cocaine, rent-boys, the lot - to flog a Gibraltar "zero-tax" company that in reality lands clients with big HMRC bills and penalties.

The strangest tax scam we’ve uncovered. Thread 👇
Of if you want to go straight to our full report, with complete documents and links/references: taxpolicy.org.uk/offshore-advis…

The UK tax paradox:

1️⃣ The tax burden is at a post-war high, and 52% of us say we're over-taxed.

2️⃣ Yet the average UK worker paid less tax on their wages in 2024 than any previous year. And less than peers in the other big European countries.

How can both be true?

🧵 Full explainer here, with interactive charts for the bored, and footnotes for the truly committed:

taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/06/27/uk-…

Zia Yusuf has published a response to our report on the Reform UK "Britannia card" proposal. It's disappointing: heavy on insults, light on substance, and revealing that Mr Yusuf cites an OBR paper he hasn't read.

https://x.com/ZiaYusufUK/status/1937247693971308754

I won't respond to the insults, but people who have actual arguments don't need to accuse people of writing "drivel" and being "outlandishly stupid". This is playground stuff.

A few people have asked for a shorter summary of our piece on the Reform UK "Britannia card" proposal.

We've also updated our report with a full copy of the Reform UK paper. Quick thread: Reform UK have fallen into the trap of forgetting there are many different types of "non-doms":

Reform UK is proposing a "Britannia card" that would let wealthy foreigners pay a £250k fee to move to the UK, and live here exempt from all tax on their foreign assets.

What they don't say: it would cost the UK £34bn.

Thread: For many years someone moving to the UK was a "non-dom" - paying tax on UK income/assets but exempt from tax on foreign income/assets (unless they brought them into the UK).

40% of all corporation tax owed by small businesses isn't paid. How has this happened, without anyone noticing or caring?

Because nobody wants to talk about it.

These reactions to the latest HMRC tax gap figures are typical:
If you missed it, here's our report from yesterday on the latest HMRC data, with the astonishing 40% stat: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/06/19/the…

New data reveals that 40% of corporation tax due from small businesses isn’t being paid.

It’s a hidden crisis that costs the UK £15 billion a year — and HMRC has quietly lost control.

Thread. The "tax gap" is all the tax that should be paid, but isn't.

People wanting clicks and headlines claim most of the tax gap is the mega-wealthy and large corporations. People looking at the data know it's like this:

Just on Times Radio talking about the Green Party wealth tax proposal. The usual populist stuff about magically raising lots of money from Other People. But in reality the Green Party manifesto raised marginal income tax rate to *72%* for a graduate with three kids earning £60k. That's thanks to the interaction between the Green Party proposal to end the "cap" on national insurance contributions, and the existing rules for student loans and child benefit. Unclear the Green Party understood this. I wrote about the issue here: taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/06/07/gre…

Starmer is correct. We can't tax our way to growth.

But we can *tax reform* our way to growth. Some ideas: 1. Corporation tax simplification. The UK corporate tax system is currently less competitive than Italy or Greece, never mind Sweden and Denmark. ft.com/content/9a9515…

Our new report: local political parties are renting out office space to MPs — who claim the cost on expenses.

But in most cases, they pay no tax on that income — or on rent from local businesses.

We reviewed 630 sets of accounts. What we found is a systemic failure. 🧵 Our full report is here, with all the data, links to the accounts and the code we used to analyse everything. taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/11/pol…

Here's Gary Stevenson calling for a return to the 1970s, when the top rate of tax was 98%. But did the rich ever pay it?

We spoke to 1970s tax dodgers and ex-HMRC staff & and crunched the data.

A 🧵, but here's a spoiler: the rich pay more tax *now*. A much longer version of this thread is here, with references, links to sources and footnotes taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/08/tax…

ZLX — the R&D tax firm that sued a client for refusing to claim a £30k tax refund for installing a fridge — has quietly rebranded.

Meet TaxTek.

Same people. Same nonsense. New name.

🧵👇 Our new report: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/04/10/zlx…