We have received a number of emails from supporters of the UK UnCut movement asking what can be done to curtail tax cheating in Britain. We are happy to contribute the following ideas to the melting pot.

Britain has a particular problem with tax cheating. London lies at the centre of a global tax haven empire and tax cheating has become the norm at boardroom level and among rich people. It is not helpful that so many politicians are themselves users of tax havens. This has meant that despite years of promises of action, ordinary people in Britain have suffered a generally deteriorating situation as the business community has become more aggressive in its tax avoidance and British banks have become more devious in supporting tax cheats.

Stirring stuff about how UK is stuffed full of tax cheats and how 'ordinary people' want to do something about it.

Let's suppose that Ritchie and UKuncut are right. Wouldn't you expect them to be able to produce some absolutely cast-iron cases of tax cheating that would lead to action being taken by HMRC?

Instead, we have as the two cases they have chosen to lead on:

• Vodafone, of which both the company itself and HMRC say the allegation of tax dodging is an 'urban myth'; and
• Topshop, where campaigners seem to have a complete confusion as to whether they're talking about Arcadia's corporate taxes or Sir Philip Green's personal taxes.

These are so pitifully weak, you can hear the sounds of a giant barrel being scraped. Are these really their strongest cases? Just how poor are the rest?  As this excellent piece over at Mark Lee's TaxBuzz blog explains, their entire campaign is based on a catalogue of fallacies and inconsistencies.

Rather than having proved that there's a culture of tax cheating, their campaign highlights their own political bias. It's fine to want to undermine personal property rights, to steal other people's hard-earned money, if that's what you believe. It's pretty far from okay to dress that up as a campaign against tax cheating, when it's so obviously based on a tissue of lies. Their response to criticisms of their facts over Vodafone and Topshop has been to claim that the specifics don't matter, it's a general problem. If that's the case, we need to see some specific cases, otherwise we can legitimately claim that they're a bunch of liars who are using misinformation to fuel their own political prejudices at our expense.

Merry Christmas to all!

People who read this post also read:

• The neanderthal social views of the ukuncut protestors
• Deconstructing Ritchie’s defence of UKuncut
• The grinches that want to ruin Christmas for ordinary people
• Yarbles to GAARballs
• Ukuncut: not moral but feral

Filed under: Current issues, Taxation with tags idiots, lies, mark lee, richard murphy, sir philip green, tax avoidance, topshop, ukuncut, vodafone