Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone made £65m selling faulty PPE to the Government. HMRC now wants £39m in unpaid tax — and we think we know why: Barrowman and Mone may have avoided tax on their £65m profit.

What if there was a consensus on the tax reforms the UK needs? What if it was backed by policy experts from think tanks across the political spectrum, from the Adam Smith Institute to the Resolution Foundation? The consensus is real. The question is: will anyone act on it?

Those appalling neoliberal capitalists at the Guardian have just published a piece calling for stamp duty on shares to be abolished or cut. They're right.

Carter-Ruck, the UK’s most notorious libel firm, used abusive litigation to silence criticism of a former Tory donor. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is investigating - but Carter-Ruck just filed a judicial review. If successful, they'll have total impunity. Thread:

The Sunday Times reported that the Government was drawing up plans for an exit tax. If I was a Government thinking about introducing an exit tax, the *last* thing I'd do is give any hint that's what I was about to do. Or people will leave to pre-empt it.

The FT reported a "Budget tax raid on the owners of expensive homes", expected to raise around £4bn. But 80% of that comes from the homes in the *second* highest council tax band. As with many tax increases, most of the burden falls on the not-so-rich. Here's why:

The fundamental problem: 58% of voters want public spending maintained or increased. 67% want taxes to stay at their current level or be cut. In reality, it’s a binary choice. Taxes go up, or spending is cut. That’s it.

Lots of people say the Government should significantly cut spending. Hardly any spell out how that could be achieved. So kudos to the Policy Exchange for a serious-minded report proposing spending cuts taking the size of the state down to where it was before the pandemic.

Thanks for all your messages of support. Lots of people asked, but I won't be crowdfunding this because I expect to win. Even if I don't get my costs back, feels wrong to ask for money from people who in many cases will have less than me.

About to start, but not too late to get a ticket:

I am being personally sued for more than £8m by a barrister, Setu Kamal. I believe this is one of the largest English libel claims ever made.

In case you missed it, for everyone here who's a law firm partner earning £1m+, we've a calculator webapp to let you estimate how much employer NICs would cost you: taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/10/21/p...

lovely thread about how partnerships turned into LLPs...

What could be easier and more popular than raising £2bn by taxing lawyers? Thread:

If you like our combination of legal and tax investigations, and tax policy deep dives, you can subscribe for free updates at the Tax Policy Associates website.

A "British ISA" was a terrible idea when the Conservatives were thinking about it, and it remains a terrible idea today.

Hello, internet. The definition of tax evasion is not "when people I don't like politically do it, it's tax evasion"

People often ask me "why can't tax avoidance be made illegal"? It's a good question. I recently tried quite hard to make one of the worst kinds of tax avoidance illegal. I think I got it wrong. Thread:

If you like our combination of legal and tax investigations, and tax policy deep dives, you can subscribe for free updates at the Tax Policy Associates website. taxpolicy.org.uk/subscribe

Amazing story in The Times. Reform UK failed to pay VAT to HMRC on its sales (tickets, merchandise). About £400k in all. Not tax avoidance. Not tax evasion. They just didn't realise when you sell stuff you have to charge VAT.

Some of the worst people are taking advantage of farmers' fears about IHT changes to sell them doomed schemes to avoid the tax. The worst of the worst is a man called Iain Clifford.

I’ve a piece in the Observer: reform corporation tax - radical simplification that will incentivise investment. observer.co.uk/news/capital...

NEW: Britain’s top libel firm, Carter-Ruck, acted for OneCoin - a $4bn crypto-fraud. The firm threatened whistleblowers, journalists, regulators, and even the police. Carter-Ruck's work helped the fraud continue as long as it did. Was that a crime?

This is one of hundreds of TikTok videos used by "Arka Wealth" to market a scheme to avoid all UK and European taxes. Small detail: it had no chance of succeeding, and in many countries would constitute criminal tax fraud. What happened after we reported on it?

Pretty surprised to see a tax avoidance scheme being pitched in today's Financial Times:

I'm on a panel 6pm, Thursday 23 October with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, discussing taking on Britain's fiercest libel law firm...

About to give evidence to the House of Lords sub-committee on the new proposed criminal offence of failing to disclose tax avoidance schemes. It’s something I called for. But I now think there’s a better way. More to follow.

Are you "serious about protecting your bloodline"? That's the very weird hard sell from Property118, an unregulated firm marketing a dodgy tax avoidance scheme. So are they ripping off HMRC? Or their own clients? The answer is: both

Today’s Times gives “urged” the entirely new meaning of “a lukewarm mention in the middle of a 66 page report”.

Nik Storonsky, the founder of Revolut, has left the UK and become tax resident in Dubai - escaping more than £3bn of UK tax. Could we have stopped him leaving? Either with the carrot of a more competitive tax system, or the stick of an exit tax? Some thoughts:

How do dodgy tax advisers respond when faced with evidence they created fake tax relief claims? 1️⃣ Admit it? 2️⃣ Say it was an honest mistake? 3️⃣ Threat and bluster? The answer is unlikely to surprise you.

Big development on our July storyabout a dodgy tax relief claim by Dundee United and tax firm ZLX. The club made a huge claim for R&D tax relief which said that 24% of the players' time, and 80% of the chef's time, was spent on "research and development". Not credible.

Who benefits from the abolition of stamp duty land tax? The first answer: people buying very expensive homes. Average saving for someone buying a £10m+ home is £1.7m. Average saving for someone buying a £250k-£500k home is £5k.

Tax advice in the UK is an unregulated Wild West. The biggest losers aren’t billionaires — it’s ordinary small businesses sold shiny “avoidance” that blows up. When HMRC catches it, clients face huge bills. When HMRC doesn’t, the rest of us foot the cost. 🧵

Under UK law, a company can make £200m+ in sales and still hide its profit & loss by calling itself “small”. That’s how PPE Medpro kept its finances secret. A short thread on one of Britain’s daftest loopholes, the 1970s EU compromise that created it — and how to fix it.

Lots of people asking about the Government's prospects for recovering the £120m from Barrowman/Mone/their companies Short answer: I don't know. I'm not an insolvency specialist. No clue how the £120m was paid out to them from PPE Medpro So I have no technical answer But...

A very significant Court of Appeal decision yesterday for anyone with an interest in trusts (everyone else, my apologies).

Douglas Barrowman and Michelle Mone's company, PPE Medpro, has just been ordered to refund the Government £122m from a PPE contract. There are two very odd things about PPE Medpro that may affect the odds of the Government ever getting that £122m... Thread:

So Baroness Mone didn’t just connect PPE Medpro to the government’s VIP lane. She took an active role lobbying for the company:

I'm now really confused. Keir Starmer just told Laura K he didn't create a trust. We've been asking him about this for a month, directly referring to a trust. No denial until today.

When Keir Starmer gave a field to his parents, he used a "life interest trust". This meant that, as its value grew from £20k to £300k, it was outside their inheritance tax estate. How did this work? And was it tax avoidance? 🧵

More on this tomorrow am:

New podcast - I was a guest on "Law and Disorder"... easily my favourite legal podcast, with three ridiculously over-qualified hosts: Charlie Falconer, Helena Kennedy and Nicholas Mostyn. Discussing Angela Rayner's tax and the general scandal of SLAPPs

Is Andy Burnham right? Is there "definitely a case" for reintroducing the 50p tax rate?

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?