Tax Policy Associates

We wrote in 2023 about a complex landlord tax avoidance scheme sold by an unregulated firm called Property118. HMRC subsequently opened enquiries into Property118's clients, and determined that the firm should have disclosed the scheme. The First-tier Tri

I have a brilliant idea for a new tax. The rules are simple: Pick a card. On your 65th birthday you shuffle a deck and draw one card. An ace or a king, and congratulations: one day you will pay my new tax. Any other card, and you will never pay a penny of

People often talk about the Laffer curve: the idea that if you raise a tax beyond a certain point, you may in fact reduce revenues. Laffer curve effects are rather more common in newspaper headlines than in actual tax data. But that may be about to change

We have a new Chancellor - and it looks like a tax cut may be surprisingly high on his agenda. Andy Burnham has said the freezing of income tax thresholds was "the thing I heard the most on the doorsteps", and that it was "lodged in my mind". The personal

Christopher Harborne, a British-Thai billionaire, gave Nigel Farage £5m in 2024. Genuine gifts are usually tax-free, and when this article was first published our conclusion was that the £5m was probably not taxable. On 15 July 2026 the Guardian reported

I just wrote in the Sunday Times about the political and economic case for a land value tax. I think the principled argument for LVT is compelling, and our (likely) next Prime Minister has supported it for many years.1, calling it "aspirational socialism"

The November 2025 Budget introduced a "mansion tax" - formally, the "high value council tax surcharge" - an annual charge on homes worth £2m or more. The Mail on Sunday has reported that Andy Burnham may lower the threshold to £1.5m. We've looked at what

If you're a US citizen then you pay US tax wherever in the world you live. Americans can't escape the US tax system simply by moving abroad; they have to give up their citizenship. The Liberal Democrats and others have suggested the UK should adopt someth

Keir Starmer announced £15 billion of additional defence spending - £4.7bn of that is currently unfunded. That leaves Andy Burnham, expected to become Prime Minister, with a problem. Where is he going to find £4.7bn? One answer would be to cut spending. H

It's the UK's biggest and least discussed tax problem. There's between £30bn and £48bn missing from each year's small business tax bills. It's been getting worse - and nobody knows why. There's no other issue where so much money is at stake but so little