Richard Murphy on Tax, Tesco and The Guardian

He makes four points:

1) "The Guardian made a mistake on a highly technical issue."

Confusing some tens of millions of stamp duty with a billion of corporation tax is a "highly technical issue" now instead of a godawful mistake by financial illiterates.

2) He\’s still using his own "tax gap methodology".

"Tescos has not paid the tax expected of it at the rates set by parliament, using various methods of calculation."

This is insane. All of the methods in use are put into the law by Parliament itself: we are, after all, talking about tax planning and tax avoidance, not tax evasion. Simply comparing the headline rate with tax paid, without taking account of the exemptions, allowances, depreciation rates and so on deliberately and specifically put into law by Parliament is, as I say, insane.

3) "Tax planning and tax avoidance are both normal and legal."

Excellent, glad we\’ve got that sorted then. So can we stop whining about it please?

4) "But most of all this says we need much more research into this issue and that funding for this work is urgently needed"

My word, can you hear a retired accountant calling for money to be spent upon a retired accountant?