Richard Murphy

In Richard Murphy's review of ‘The Great ADHD myth?’ he states that Channel 4 should hang its head in shame. [1] tl;dr: "[Pemberton] failed to mention that he specialises in geriatric care." "No evidence was presented from anyone who suffered from the condition, except a 10-year-old boy." "...a biased view on a subject where the opinion presented will cause significant harm..." "...deeply ethically and politically irresponsible." Keep in mind that this is an article by the BBC about a BBC documentary. Think critically about bias in state run media or suffer the consequences. [^1]: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/08/19/channel-4-should-hang-i…

The Economist is a neoliberal dish rag. There is a completely made up number that is an increasingly large portion of GDP in OECD nations and that number is imputed rent [1]. This is a fictional number that owner-occupiers "pay" themselves to live in their own houses. So as housing prices go up, so does imputed rent. House prices have increasingly become the best vehicle for investment funds because the returns are esentially protected. But none of that produces anything. The UK in particular has been described as buy-to-let economy. It doesn't have to be this way. If you limit property speculation then capital will find something else productive to do, like manufacturing. Dish rags like The Economist present it as inevitable that Western nations become financialized. It's simply not true. Look at Germany. Also look at the fact that Germany greatly limits the collaterialization and speculation on property. That's not an accident. [1]: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/02/14/10-or-gdp-is-made-up-it…

A good resource on this is UK campaigner Richard Murphy - http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/ The basics are it is foolish to try and introduce a wealth tax - ie Bezos is worth 400Bn so we want 40bn now please. It becomes impossible to actually say how much a person owns - it fluctuates, even if they are co-operating fully it’s a fools game. Yet tax rates are different for different categories - equalise those, and tax people at points of liquidation events - so capital gains is the most obvious. Other liquidation events is borrowing against assets (the buy,borrow,die idea). One can fairly easily imagine a minimum floor for all these - say 5 million in any fiscal year or whatever so we focus on where the money really is. It’s also worth remembering that tax is simply a way of destroying the tokens of resource allocation (money). We want to tax the wealth to remove say X trillion globally. But remove it from the wealthiest who society has decided to give trillions to to handle covid but society thinks probably should not be having such a ratio of control over societies assets And the implication is some other more destructive event can / will occur to rebalance - for example a massive stock market crash. The idea of “billions wiped off the exchange” is the same as a tax event - it’s just way more destructive and uncontrolled - event th wealthiest would rather t have tax planning than recessions and crashes

I know it's so hard, even in the UK people get upset 'Why does this inner city youth club get X benefit' 'Why are we sending X troubled child to X holiday camp for the summer' 'Why doesn't my child get these things?' is often the question, but the answer that these things are put in place to try and reduce future potential crime and other societal damage are not things that a lot of people want to consider - I'm spending money now to negate possible risk in the future? I can't find the report now, but there was an interesting experiment in London. In the UK the average homeless person costs the state around £26,000 (http://homeless.org.uk/costs-homelessness#.UgTa1Y3qlNQ) or even more in London. A charity was able to get £5000 per homeless person from a corporate donation, and offered this money directly to 100 homeless people, with the only previsions being that they did not get to handle the cash directly and that everything they spent money on helping them get off the street. Obviously this was a self selecting group (people that wanted to leave rough sleeping), but the following year a stunning proportion of those who had taken part had been able to turn their lives around. Should there be a buffer to help people turn their lives around and stop them costing the state money? I'm all for it, but I have no idea how we could stop abuse of the system. We could start by trialling the idea out though, with money saved by stopping people and companies avoiding paying their…

Please link directly to the transcript: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/19/elon-musk-is-wrong/

The actual article is here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2023/06/26/profits-are-driving-inf… What's weird is that the author uses EU data, not UK data, but the headline refers to the Bank of England.

Well that is the story that those who don't want to see Scottish Independence will push. It's a colonial argument. It's a very narrow view of wealth flows, looking at the bigger picture then more flows back the other way. e.g. See the example of Strathclyde Police Training and Recruitment Centre here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/16/the-burden-of-financial…

The UK paid in form of excess mortality. Nothing to be proud of. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-projected… > At least they don't have the immigration and poverty of the local population problem UK? The UK had some of the regions with high poverty in the EU. Outside of London there are regions of high poverty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Kingdom Just three years ago: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/12/11/the-uks-poorest-regions… Brexit makes it all only worse.

> if your budget isn't balanced you need to borrow. No. That is how it works for citizens and households. That is not how it works for governments and central banks. Their role and their financial apparatus is completely different. Thinking that it works the same way is a well-known fallacy. The government more closely resembles the _counterparty_ in civilian borrowing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-Household_analogy https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/11/11/the-uk-government-is-no… https://theconversation.com/why-the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-house…

Richard Murphy is a proponent of MMT and certainly leans towards the left. He explained recently how he feels QE 2008-16 (which led to asset price inflation) is different to QE in covid times. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/02/06/reversing-qe-could-be-a…

A number of commentators have pointed out that the 7% deficit figure doesn't make an awful lot of sense as it ignores a lot of factors regarding the structure of the UK economy that wouldn't necessarily be in place for an independent Scotland - so comparing the GERS 7% figure with a 3% figure for an actual independent country in the EU isn't comparing like with like. Makes good headlines though. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/21/the-gers-data-is-ludicr… Edit: Article from the same source about GERS: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/08/21/whatever-gers-reports-t…

The Financial Times speculated that Libra transactions - because they involve some currency risk - will incur capital gains taxes (CGT). Although the CGT absolute amounts are likely to be very small, and in some countries will be covered by a personal allowance, this will still cause tremendously fiddly problems when filing taxes. I'm afraid the link to the FT article is behind a paywall, but this blog post summarises it: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2019/07/01/facebooks-libra-and-tax…

Not just in silicon valley by a long way. MG Rover: https://insolvencyandlaw.co.uk/why-didnt-insolvency-service-prosecute-… BHS: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/27/philip-green-escapes-… / https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/28/philip-green-agrees-p… Maplin: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/02/28/40831/ (fundamentally in a capitalist society that recognises no moral restraint on money and it's not illegal ... why not? Surely you take as much money from the investors as you can and pocket exactly as much as you can get away with without being prosecuted? Anything less would be economically inefficient! /s)

I think what might (or at least should) tip them over the edge here is that they added on fees for these imaginary law firms to their customers' bills. NAL, but sounds like plain, old fashioned fraud to me. Edit: I see I'm not the only one thinking this: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2014/06/25/wonga-committed-a-fraud-…

IANAL, but as far as I understand a company director only has a 'duty to promote the success of the company' in the UK [1]. I think it is similar in the US. 'Success of the company' doesn't strictly have to mean making a profit, if the shareholders don't want it to. [1] http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013/01/07/companies-do-not-have-a-…

So basically, dropbox makes a public announcement to tell the world (and the shareholders) they're now engaging in tax evasion in Europe to make better profit. Hopefully they'll have a better story for the european authorities later on, not like starbucks, amazon or google: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2012/11/13/starbucks-google-and-ama…

Quite so. Richard Murphy put together a set of definitions that might be of interest: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/07/07/tax-avoidance-evasion-co… > Tax avoidance is seeking to minimise a tax bill without deliberate deception (which would be tax evasion) but contrary to the spirit of the law. It therefore involves the exploitation of loopholes and gaps in tax and other legislation in ways not anticipated by the law. Those loopholes may be in domestic tax law alone, but they may also be between domestic tax law and company law or between domestic tax law and accounting regulations, for example. The process can also seek to exploit gaps that exist between domestic tax law and the law of other countries when undertaking international transactions. (I'm a former tax accountant, at KPMG - these definitions are uncontroversial AFAIK)

The only real point he makes is that taxing the rich too much will drive them abroad. As far as i know there is no proof for this. Proof that this occurs: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2006/08/20/100/ Another far more dangerous effect is that the rich might produce less. If they produce goods abroad, the only deadweight loss is the cost of shipping. For every good/service not produced, we lose the entire consumer surplus. One famous (albeit historical) example of this is that actor Ronald Reagan only made one movie a year - due to high taxes, making two movies/year earned him virtually no additional income. The only remaining question is the degree to which these effects occur.

>If that’s your personal ideology then fuck old people benefits No idea what you are getting at here. >Saying think of the children The health and wellbeing of children is important. It is not wrong or irrational to think about it. On the contrary, it is irrational to make supposed 'savings' by neglecting the very people who will be the engine of the future economy. >UK’s debt to GDP ratio was under 30 in 2000, and hit ~70 in 2010. The growth slowed and stopped after conservatives took over. We're both looking at the same graph. The debt to GDP ratio has been consistently higher under the Conservatives than it ever was under the preceding Labour government. You are picking an economic statistic at random, misrepresenting it, and still failing to point to any tangible benefits of the Conservatives' cuts in public spending. We are supposed to just accept that cuts are good because 'spending less is good'. More on the Conservatives vs. Labour and debt here: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/06/24/the-tories-have-always-…

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/10/17/why-we-need-action-to-t… >However, I include Worstall’s argument for a reason. It is true that some are more productive than others in an economy and it is true that this has always meant, and is likely now to mean, that those who are more productive do earn higher rewards than those who are less productive. In principle I have little argument with this idea: I have no difficulty with there being some differential in earnings within any society and think them inevitable subject to their being a safety net to ensure that all can have access to the resources they need to fully engage in the society in which they live (which means much more than having a basic material standard of living). Importantly though, what Worstall’s suggestion implies is that there are very obvious limits to wealth differentials, because the fact is that however clever someone might be the differences in productivity we humans have to offer is not that big. I repeat, the differences in productivity we humans have to offer are not that big.

Publicly traded companies (kinda) have to do what their shareholders want them to, but that doesn't have to be maximizing returns (still less maximizing returns in the short term). Here's some comment on this with quotations from actual law, but note that (1) it's from the UK rather than the US and presumably the relevant laws aren't quite the same, and (2) the author's position is further to the left than is customary in the US. So discount it as you please. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/10/24/companies-do-not-have-a-… And a more US-centric discussion with some useful links: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-leg… And a white paper whose main topic is executive compensation but that has a useful discussion of this issue (in section 2): http://www.neiinvestments.com/neifiles/PDFs/5.4%20Research/Exec_Comp_E… -- reading between the lines, it looks as if there's at least a case to be made that US case law requires corporations to act in the financial interests of their shareholders, but it's debatable, and in other jurisdictions there isn't even much of a case to be made. (I am not, even slightly, a lawyer.)