New report in The Times: football clubs have been claiming £millions of tax back using a tax relief intended to boost science and technology.

It's a relief that has been widely abused - wrong and fraudulent claims probably cost us all £10bn in lost tax. So were the football clubs really entitled to it? Here are the conditions for R&D tax relief. It has to be an advance in science or technology. gov.uk/guidance/corpo…

Here's why Trump's "VAT is a tariff" claim is beyond stupid. But also why America's *lack* of VAT puts it at an unfair disadvantage. A tariff is a tax on imported goods that doesn't apply to domestic goods. So, for example, most US cars imported into the UK have a 10% tariff. .

Cars made in the UK don't face a tariff, even if made by a US-owned business.

Tariffs *are* discriminatory. That's the point.

A wave of ‘muppet’ directors is coming - ordinary people hired off Facebook to front fraudulent companies, while the real masterminds behind the frauds stay hidden.

It’s already a problem, but it’s about to explode. Here’s why - and how we stop it. 🧵 Meet Donna:

Hundreds of innocent postmasters were prosecuted for false accounting. It's a serious crime.

So what happens to a company's directors when they're caught forging, not one line, but whole of their accounts? And the High Court has said the accounts were forged? This is Shree Investment plc. Its 2016 accounts weren't hugely suspicious, although the numbers look a bit round:

We reported over the weekend on a network of fake companies that tried to steal a Ukrainian gold mine. Some of the trails lead to the KGB and apocalypse cults, and that's way beyond our little think tank.

Here's a list for any journalists/OSINT people wanting to pick it up: First level of difficulty. Why were all these companies created? We know the 2019 companies were created (at the red line) to seize the gold mine. But what happened in 2012 and 2016 (the green lines)?

(interactive version of the chart: ) taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/ass…

Our new report: the world's most convincing fake company - and how it tried to seize a gold mine in Ukraine

That leads to 60 fake companies, £300bn of fake gold & even a fake country. With backing from the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge, Nadhim Zahawi and Baroness Mone. All fake. This will be a long thread. But if you want something more convenient, longer, or you just love footnotes, our full report is here: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/02/08/who…

Our latest update: mistakes by Companies House and the Financial Conduct Authority resulted in fraudsters obtaining FCA authorisation. A thread: In 2017, the fraudsters applied for FCA registration for a company called Stallion Financial Investments plc. Here's its balance sheet, showing £12m of assets.

There are companies worth £50bn* based in this terraced house in Bolton.

Turns out they also have a bank. With a valid VAT registration number.

(*on paper)
And a holding company, with a professional-looking website:

What's better than a mystery? A free app.

I have both this morning.

I'll link to the app in the next tweet. It lets you identify suspicious companies on Companies House, searching either by their business category or their address.

The mystery follows after that. Here's the app link - should work nicely on mobile, and on iPhone if you "save to desktop" it will behave like an app. taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/ass…

Fraudsters are setting up fake banks on Companies House - here's how we found 16 in three minutes... using an automated tool we've just made freely available.

Thread: There's a longer version of this thread here, with details of the fake banks we found, and how to download/use the tool. taxpolicy.org.uk/finding_fake_b…

The world's biggest company isn’t Apple or Amazon—it’s a UK firm called Novateur, with £100 trillion in assets.

Incredible? Yes.
True? Kind of.
Real? Not remotely.

It's a blatant fraud. Here’s how Companies House missed it - and how they could stop these frauds for good. We published a report on Saturday on Avis Capital Limited. It claims to be a "bank" and to have £58bn of net assets and 150,000 employees. But none of that is true; it filed fake accounts as part of what we believe was an international fraud. taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/01/25/the…

This is the HQ of Avis Capital. It claims to be one of the largest companies in the UK, with £58bn in assets and 31% returns promised to investors.

Except it's all a lie.

Here's how regulatory failures are letting international fraudsters create massive fake UK companies. Our new report is here:

Thread: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/01/25/the…

Douglas Barrowman sold a possibly criminal, tax avoidance scheme using an Isle of Man company called Principal Contracts Ltd. The Isle of Man authorities say it failed to file accounts, paid unlawful dividends, & failed to pay £5m of Isle of Man VAT.

Guess what happened next? PCL sold tax avoidance schemes which replaced normal taxable employment income with supposedly non-taxable loans.

The schemes never worked, but HMRC failed to challenge them in the usual way. In a panic, the Government introduced a "loan charge" to tax the loans.

Ballpark flat tax numbers: a fiscally neutral income tax flat tax would be about 25% - i.e. 5% increase in basic rate, 15% cut in higher rate. So the average earner would pay about £1,200 more tax/year. Someone on £100k would pay £5k less. Someone on £200k, £30k less. Or if the idea is to eliminate the higher and top rate, so everyone is taxed at 20%, we'd need to cut c£100bn of spending. For context, the NHS costs £180bn; defence spending is £60bn.

Ian Clifford Stamp makes £500k/month by selling made-up "sovereign citizen" get rich quick schemes to vulnerable people.

Stamp doesn't like people pointing that out this is all pretend- so he's pretending to sue me for $1.5m. I say "pretending" because he's sent me something written in blue ink requiring that that, within 14 days, I agree to everything he says, deny everything he says and deny some of what he says. Nakedness is also involved.

Whatever this is, Stamp doesn't seem very good at it.

I often get legal threats. This one's a little different - it's printed on blue ink, babbles incomprehensibly about mail fraud, and was also served on Janet Yellen and Richard Hermer (UK attorney general). A quick thread about why this isn't funny.
The document is from Ian Clifford Stamp, who runs "Matrix Freedom". They sell get-rich-quick schemes that promise to eliminate debts/mortgages and "create currency". This email shows them selling £500,000 of "currency creation" for the low, low, price of £2,000.

New data on farms and inheritance tax: a third of farm estates over £1.5m aren’t farmers but wealthy people avoiding IHT by sinking money into farmland.

The Budget hits farmers too hard and tax avoiders too lightly. It needs to change. Detailed analysis and full proposal here, with technical input from farm tax specialists like @StuartMaggs.

Summary thread: taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/11/24/how…

The mystery tax avoider's name will be revealed in three weeks. A quick thread, and update on our story from May. Full background, references and links here: taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/05/08/mys…

The Budget employer national insurance increase will mostly end up being passed to employees in the form of lower wages and reduced employment. A thread on why I'm disappointed by the Budget, and why this chart makes me sad. A longer version of this thread here: , with links to references, sources, and the spreadsheet generating the charts. taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/11/21/the…

A horrible mess for some private school parents who paid fees in advance to try to avoid Labour's VAT hike. And it's entirely the fault of the private schools and their associations.

A quick thread on how to avoid VAT successfully, and how the schools didn't.. We warned back in May that private schools were encouraging parents to pay in advance to avoid Labour's VAT hike, but structuring these schemes *really badly*.

We said that, under usual VAT principles, there was a high risk these schemes would fail, and parents *would* end up paying the VAT. taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/05/09/pri…

The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.

What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will be pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100. Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.