Tim Worstall

Germany is playing Israel tonight. All the local pubs are showing it. It’s soccer which is less important and violent than some previous matches. And while I like, and would happily introduce to my mother (umm, OK, excepting the one that I personally find most amusing but ain’t that always the case?) all of the [...]

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The explanation has been the hegemony of ideas that the Washington Consensus represents. That consensus opposes progressive taxation: it is its opposition to the idea that has closed down debate on this and other issues of tax policy. My, that’s just astonishing. For given that absolutely every country has a progressive income tax system (yes, [...]

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Yes, it’s a real cracker. As always. Over a period of thirty years top rates of income tax have fallen from 60% to 45%, corporation tax rates will have more than halved, And see page 56 here. The effective average corporation tax rate has barely budged and nor has the average marginal tax rate. What [...]

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Letter to the DT from the usual suspects: A recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report on implementation of its anti-bribery convention was critical of the British Government, which has ultimate and final responsibility for crown dependencies and overseas territories, including a number of tax havens. Havens can facilitate tax evasion, money laundering and [...]

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Siri: I am infinitely more likely to say “Malthus” than “Waffles”…

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What is for sale: During Euro 2012, all members of this Facebook Group will root for the national soccer team of the highest bidder, or the national team of his choice. Even if it’s Holland. We will watch the games, wear the colors, possibly even buy the flag and learn the national anthem. Pictures and [...]

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Meanwhile the owner of a kosher restaurant in Rome’s historic Ghetto quarter dismissed a row over Mr Zuckerberg not leaving a tip when he and his new wife ate there during their two-day stay in the capital. Umberto Pavoncello said the failure to leave a tip for a lunch which cost 32 euros (£26) was [...]

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It also concluded that property taxes were the highest in the EU. Well, that’s true. The UK gets a larger chunk of its tax revenue from property than any other OECD country in fact. Twice the average. So we can’t say that property is undertaxed….. On the cost of flying, it adds: “Aviation is taxed [...]

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Well now, this is turn up for the books. David Cameron’s former communications chief Andy Coulson has been arrested and charged with perjury. Tommy Sheridan was found guilty and jailed over perjury in the same series of cases. So no one can really complain if they have a look at the truth of what everyone [...]

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I know what you are thinking – “I don’t need no stinkin’ social intranet. Besides, I don’t even know what it is. What is it? Facebook for accountants?” Ok, intranet means internal internet. And social is what you become after a couple of drinks at the Christmas party. So social intranet means … not what [...]

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Ho hum, another campaign from the UK Uncut jobbies. This time about a living wage for all. It’s the usual nonsensical mishmash of barely understood figures. The big chart on their website is this familiar one:   The point being made is obvious: wages as a share of national income are down so it must [...]

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Disastrous, nuclear power must obviously be banned immediately! Cesium-137 has a radioactive half-life of about 30 years, and traces of the isotope still persist from above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s. But cesium-134, which has a half-life of only two years, “is inarguably from Fukushima Daiichi,” Stanford University marine ecologist Dan Madigan [...]

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With a line-up that includes Drew Barrymore, David Beckham, Orlando Bloom, and Ricky Martin, the UN’s choice of ambassadors has been known to cause raised eyebrows or the odd smirk. Seldom, however, has there been such anger, or questioning of the organisation’s credibility, as that greeting the appointment of a new international envoy for tourism: [...]

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A few years back, when the euro was strong against the dollar, I was, in large part, being paid in dollars: calculation of payments was done in dollars you understand. Most of my expenses were here in Europe in euros. Various bits and bobs have changed and now my income is determined and calculated in [...]

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Although I did know it, missed making the point: Ms Lagarde was forced to publish an embarrassing climbdown on her Facebook page over the weekend after being bombarded by hundreds of Greek people who felt insulted by her suggestion that the country’s crisis was partly due to “all these people in Greece who are trying [...]

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They must be, we’ve got two entirely opposite proposals out there about the debts. The plan splits the public debts of EMU states. Anything up to the Maastricht limit of 60pc of GDP would remain sovereign. Anything over 60pc would be transfered gradually into the redemption fund. This would be covered by joint bonds. It’s [...]

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Rosi Prescott, chief executive of Central YMCA, said if there was strong evidence that appearance-related discrimination was widespread, the Equalities Act should be broadened to include it. That would make it a punishable offence to harass someone because of their appearance, for example by drawing attention to their weight. She said: “All the rules that [...]

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Worse still, he got the politics wrong. He cut tax for the wealthy but not everyone else. He reduced tax for large companies but not small ones. He supported tax evasion through the Swiss tax deal. He encouraged large companies to take their financing operations to tax havens and in the process harmed developing countries. [...]

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She manages to ingore once again the basic fact that newspaper chase the prejudices of their readers, not form them. Never forget what Labour is up against: 80% of newspaper readership for a hundred years has belonged not just to conservatives, but mainly to extreme maverick press barons, using their power to control politics. We [...]

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Cameron’s former efficiency tsar, Philip Green, is equally efficient in the organisation of his tax affairs: he legally avoids paying millions to Revenue and Customs by paying himself in the form of a dividend to a Channel Islands company owned by his wife, Tina, who in turn is legally resident in the tax haven of [...]

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