Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Dan Neidle Profile picture
Dan Neidle
@DanNeidle
Founder, Tax Policy Associates Ltd. Tax realist. More boring on LinkedIn https://t.co/Cm5n2PhqrD
27 subscribers
Sep 14 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
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. Image 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
Sep 9 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
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: Image 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-…Evidence shows the wealth tax would hit long-run GDP by 2% to 5%, would produce no revenues before 2029, and those revenues would be much less than proponents claim.
Sep 4 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
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 🧵 Image 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…
Sep 4 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
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.) Image Some possible scenarios:
Sep 3 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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. Image 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
Sep 3 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
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: Image 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. Image
Aug 24 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
How much tax do we pay in the UK, compared to other countries?

This much: Image Or if we order it by income/payroll taxes instead: Image
Aug 22 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
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". Image
Image 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: Image
Aug 22 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
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.Image The Spear's report is here: spearswms.com/wealth/controv…
Aug 21 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
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: Image 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…
Aug 18 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
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". Image 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.
Aug 15 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
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?

🧵: Image A longer version of this thread is here, with footnotes and links to sources: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/08/15/fix…
Aug 12 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
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: Image The table is from the Pensions Policy Institute
pensionspolicyinstitute.org.uk/media/1crf4ox5…
Aug 10 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
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). I covered this in a thread here
Aug 6 • 23 tweets • 9 min read
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: Image The original reporting on all this was from Ed Siddons and Matthew Valencia for The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-1…
Aug 6 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Slightly surprised to discover I've been referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes. Image
Image My actions are apparently comparable with the recruitment of child soldiers.

The full document: taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/ass…Image
Aug 5 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
In 2017, a new corporate criminal offence was created: failure to prevent tax evasion. It was meant to change everything.

Since then? Zero prosecutions.

Until now... Image HMRC is prosecuting an accounting firm, Bennett Verby Ltd, for failure to prevent facilitation of UK tax evasion, contrary to section 45 of the Criminal Finances Act (2017).
Aug 5 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
In 2022, Nadhim Zahawi’s solicitor sent me a libel threat - and said I wasn’t even allowed to say he’d written to me.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that was improper.

Now he’s appealing.

A 🧵 on why it matters. In July 2022, I wrote that I thought Nadhim Zahawi had lied about his taxes. I was right. Nadhim Zahawi lied repeatedly about his tax affairs... Image
Aug 4 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
No, charging VAT on private healthcare is not a re-run of the VAT/education debate.

It wouldn't just impact 5% of the population - everyone who sees a private dentist/optician would pay more.

And it wouldn't raise £2bn. Plausibly it would lose money.

Thread Image I'm going to ignore the political question of whether we *should* be thinking about scrapping the VAT healthcare exemption. I'll just focus on whether it works on its own terms.
Aug 2 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
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. 🧵 Image 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 Image
Aug 1 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
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. Image 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/