Fascinating to see what I think is the first use of AI by a judge in an English court. (Here it's a first tier tax tribunal)

Here's a strange thing. How come my X post today about infamous libel law firm Carter-Ruck was seen by basically nobody? Less even than on BlueSky, which is normally much quieter than X?

Yesterday I wrote about Carter-Ruck acting for the $4bn OneCoin fraud - and how they’re finally facing accountability. But OneCoin was Carter-Ruck's *second* Ponzi fraud client Today: the first, Harlequin. And the documents we're trying to find. buff.ly/XLezLg3

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

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.

Another viral tax claim on X. The boss of Tesco apparently pays "not a penny" of UK tax on his £10m salary. True or false?

It's shocking how much consensus there is amongst tax policy wonks and economists of Left and Right on the tax reforms the UK needs to boost growth & make the tax system fairer More shocking: they're reforms that are never mentioned by any politicians buff.ly/rTfNmFC

The latest reporting on Nigel Farage again suggests he didn't avoid/evade/fail to pay tax - but that his partner lucked into a weird tax quirk.

Whenever a Labour MP says "I believe in the wealth tax" there's a little sensible tax policy somewhere that falls down dead.

Did Nigel Farage avoid higher rate stamp duty because his partner bought their Clacton house? • if she bought it out of her own funds: not tax avoidance • if he provided the funds: tax avoidance. But he says he didn't, and there's no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Two weeks ago, tax barrister Setu Kamal tried (and failed) to injunct me. Today? He’s decided to sue the UK for £3 billion.

Quite a few people are asking why Angela Rayner didn't just put a call into the head of HMRC. That would be wildly improper in 2025. However it was absolutely the done thing in 1925 A completely tangential thread:

If you are one of the six people who are interested more in the technical details of Angela Rayner's tax position (and the penalties that might apply), and less about the politics, I've updated our analysis with more caselaw:

Will Angela Rayner have to pay penalties to HMRC? if so, how much? I've run through the analysis, and conclude that she will very likely receive "careless" penalties of around 20%: buff.ly/PRD99Tt

The Ethics Adviser's letter is out. Ms Rayner's advisers told her the higher rate tax didn't apply, but they weren't tax advisers, and they recommended Ms Rayner obtain specific tax advice. She didn't. That would be a bad mistake for anyone to make, particularly the DPM.

Social media is full of one set of people shouting that Angela Rayner is an evil tax evader who deserves jail, and another set shouting she's an innocent wrongly accused. Real life is more boring than that. A short piece in today's Times.

Looking increasingly like Ms Rayner didn’t actually obtain tax advice before this week.

Christ this is appalling.

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 🧵

The tax system is a mess, stamp duty particularly messy, and the higher rate for additional properties beyond messy. So I'm generally forgiving of people who make mistakes. The problem here is that Ms Rayner has previously said stuff like this:

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.)

A key question to ask Ms Rayner: when she obtained the stamp duty advice, did she tell the adviser about the trust? It’s an easy yes/no question.

The bigger point: stamp duty is a confusing mess. The tax shouldn't exist. The second home surcharge is daft. Why are we taxing someone who buys two £500k homes £55k (£15k + £40k), But someone who buys one £1m home £43k? Where's the logic?

Here's the thing. If you're buying a house and everything is simple, you can ask your conveyancer how much stamp duty to pay. If things are complex - e.g. there's a trust - this is a very bad idea. If Ms Rayner just asked her conveyancer then that was a mistake.

What's the difference between tax avoidance, tax non-compliance and tax evasion? This. Likely Ms Rayner is in category 4 - "non-compliant".

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.

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:

Law firm Axiom Ince collapsed with £64m of client money missing. The accountants never audited the accounts - they wrongly claimed exemption. The SRA didn’t notice. The accountants regulatory fined them a pathetic £4,300. A double regulatory failure. 🧵

The Times is reporting the umpteenth Budget rumour: national insurance on landlords' rent payments. On paper, an easy way to collect a couple of £bn. In practice I think unfair and likely to be widely avoided. Quick thread:

Just reported: a court judgment case with probably the most intriguing first line in UK judicial history: (I can't lie to you; it gets more boring very quickly. But then it gets intriguing again, I promise.)

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

Presented without comment:

Council tax is regressive. The Government needs money. So it's tempting for Rachel Reeves to raise council tax on expensive homes. Could she? And how much would it raise? Our new interactive calculator has some answers:

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".

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.

Dodgy tax advisers often promise their clients they're fully insured, so the client has nothing to lose. So when Zoe Goodchild's Apostle Accounting falsely claimed HMRC refunds for 800 clients, leaving them with huge bills, you'd think they'd be fully insured. Right?

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 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".

Great to get support from rural Labour MPs. Let’s hope HMT is listening.

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? 🧵:

Relieved to be a neoliberal again this week. Being a communist was exhausting - the music was pretty good but the food was terrible.

I recently guested on the "What's Left" podcast talking about what the Left gets right and wrong on tax, and why the wealth tax is rubbish:

Baroness Mone lied she had no connection to a PPE supplier. Her lawyers threatened the Guardian. The lawyers just tried to use the courts to block a Scottish Legal Complaints Commission investigation of their actions. They failed. Investigation continues. www.bailii.org/scot/cases/S...

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 IPPR has proposed large increases in gambling taxes, to raise £3bn to "lift around half a million children out of poverty overnight". I'm torn. It's a good tax to raise. But £3bn may be optimistic. And it will mostly be gamblers paying the tax.

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:

Slightly surprised to discover I've been referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes.

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...

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.

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