Our intrepid campaigner against tax avoidance: you know, working the tax laws to your own benefit?
Lovely series of articles in which Ritchie seems to be advocating:
Turn your nanny into a personal services company and save £2, 530 a year.
Use the stakeholder pension to save up to 20% of income that you won’t have to pay in national insurance.
Reduce your tax bill by claiming all of your allowances.
We should change the law so we don’t worry about fiddles under £1,000.
Save 10% of your income by incorporating.
It’s all very different from what he says now, isn’t it?
15 responses so far ↓
1 Marksany // Aug 21, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Those were a long time ago, we all know Dickie has seen the light and the error of his ways in the past. I am sure he’d never write articles like this now.
He’d probably send a cheque to the revenue for all the tax avoidance his advice has cost us, the non-avoiding cheerful taxpayers. Except you can’t just write a cheque to the taxman.
2 BraveFart // Aug 21, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Murphy is a supreme hypocrite. Preaching compliance with the (tax) law, yet regularly thieving the intellectual property of others by publishing copyrighted material on his website, which he justifies sometimes as “reproduced in the public interest”. And sometimes doesn’t bother to justify at all:
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/08/19/dilbert-hits-the-nail-on-the-head/
3 Peter S // Aug 21, 2010 at 5:10 pm
He writes what he’s paid to write, nothing more or less; part whore part charlatan.
4 Georges // Aug 21, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Interesting, Murohy’s earlier work seems to be based upon quackery such as provable facts and statistics.
Seems those days are long gone. Murphy’s current work is naturally much more intellectually rigourous; based upon hunches, half-baked opinions, half-truths and statistics plucked out of thin air.
5 Sobers // Aug 21, 2010 at 7:43 pm
The words ‘petard’, ‘hoist’ ‘his’ ‘on’ & ‘own’ spring to mind!
6 Richard // Aug 21, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Interesting that he also promotes the nanny one as a way to pay her less than the minimum wage.
7 eugene // Aug 21, 2010 at 9:34 pm
posted on RM’s ‘tax research’ site but will get deleted by the Stalinist hyocrite
who is this Richard Murphy advocating tax avoidance / minimisation tricks to the guardianista middle -classes back in 2001-2003?
How many kidney dialysis machines were not bought because Observer and Guardian readers were busy incorporating their nannies to save tax?
8 Richard Murphy // Aug 22, 2010 at 10:21 am
Crikey it took you a long time to find them, didn’t it Tim?
The first was written because I could think of no better way of killing a scheme then being promoted on the professional lecture circuit than to give it publicity. I didn’t have blogs etc in those days. It worked. I call that a success.
The second fell into the same category – it did not work.
The third is about tax compliance. I stand by it.
The fourth is about tax simplification. I stand by it.
The fifth follows the logic of 1 and 2 – and was the way I thought I could seeking to highlight an abuse to draw attention to it.
Would I use that method now? No! I don’t need to. Was it the best I could do at the time? Yes, I thought so.
Do I apologise for using the Observer in that way? No!
But keep whistling if you want to find dirt Tim – because you won’t
Not least because a) years before you’ll find articles from me arguing against incorporation b) I never used a nanny scheme and never sold one c) I never advised clients to buy pensions for the reasons noted
So all you’ve discovered is methods have changed over time.
And some maybe weren’t terribly transparent
Big deal
Now tackle the real issues – like the abuse I was seeking to stop then, and now
And you’ll note when
9 Fascinating stuff // Aug 22, 2010 at 10:39 am
[...] has responded: The first was written because I could think of no better way of killing a scheme then being [...]
10 Peter // Aug 22, 2010 at 12:34 pm
How do you square this…
“The first was written because I could think of no better way of killing a scheme then being promoted on the professional lecture circuit than to give it publicity. ”
with this
“This may be the time to set your nanny up in her own personal company”.
??
11 BraveFart // Aug 22, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Do you think Murphy might be prevailed upon to use his peerless statistical and economics skills to tell us how much of the tax gap is attributable to the artificial tax avoidance schemes he has himself suggested and indeed promoted?
The brass neck of the man almost reaches Peter Mandelson proportions.
12 Tax Research UK » Petty, pedantic - and also wrong // Aug 22, 2010 at 4:50 pm
[...] now revolve around the right wing blogosphere let me address it head on, for what it’s worth. His blog [...]
13 In which we are challenged by Richard Murphy // Aug 24, 2010 at 12:09 pm
[...] couple of days back I pointed to our favourite retired accountant’s pieces in The Observer. They seemed very much like advice [...]
14 The Tax Gap: More Socialist Cobblers? « Neil Reddin … No G // Sep 17, 2010 at 9:51 pm
[...] a bit of a rebel you might buy in bulk for a discount. What you would ideally do, of course, is recommend that others undertake the haggling and other practices above, and then claim that you are only [...]
15 The Tax Gap: More Socialist Cobblers? « Vir Cantium // Sep 23, 2011 at 3:29 pm
[...] a bit of a rebel you might buy in bulk for a discount. What you would ideally do, of course, is recommend that others undertake the haggling and other practices above, and then claim that you are only [...]
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