Tim Worstall

From his blog comments: And there is not a hint of inflation, at all From the BBC: Inflation fell sharply in December on the back of lower fuel and clothing prices. Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation in the UK fell to 4.2% in December, down from 4.8% in November, according to the Office for National [...]

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We’ll never sell those gilts back. The IFS says we have £280bn of new gilts to sell over the next three years to fund the deficit. There is not a hope we’ll add £350 billion of resale of gilts on top of that. The only likelihood is in fact of more QE: over that period [...]

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@RichardJMurphy Richard Murphy The NHS is far too important to be left at the mercy of ideological and incompetent intervention   Quite so, quite so, which is why we need to remove it from the control of politicians. You know, those incompetents who gain their position of power over us and the NHS through ideology?

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Do long as the banks do not lend this situation will persist. Bank lending has been the way we’ve made the money that the country needs to keep the economy going. As long as banks don’t lend, and that looks likely to be for some time to come since without an increase in one of [...]

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You know, of course, that we’ve The One who tells us that all we need to fill the deficit, all we need to do to make the nasty there is no money tree problems go away, is to hire more taxmen and point them at all those nasty tax dodgers. That he’s paid by the [...]

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All of which has always left me thinking that an essential component of a GAAR is a change to the basis on which tax law is interpreted from a legal (literal) basis to an equitable (common law) basis. This is after he complains about the Duke of Westminster and Partington cases which are, as any [...]

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David Miliband: Mr Miliband’s burgeoning post-ministerial income is siphoned into the company owned with his wife, called The Office Of David Miliband Limited. Tsk, eh, tsk! Financial analysts say the tactic is usually deployed to reduce a joint tax bill by taking income in the form of share dividends and exploiting both partners’ tax-free allowances. [...]

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My, this is interesting. Essentially, we don’t have a girt big national debt because we can just ignore 20-30% of it. However, it should be noted that the government has done something else at least as significant. Through the quantitative easing programme the Bank of England has repurchased or will be soon repurchasing near enough [...]

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“He conceives that the business of the magistrate is not merely to see that the persons and property of the people are secure from attack, but that he ought to be a jack-of-all-trades, architect, engineer, schoolmaster, merchant, theologian, a Lady Bountiful in every parish, a Paul Pry in every house, spying, eavesdropping, relieving, admonishing, spending [...]

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An efficient tax system is: 1. Comprehensive – in other words, it is broad based; 2. Complete – with as few loopholes as possible; 3. Comprehensible – it is as certain as is reasonably possible; 4. Compassionate – it takes into account the capacity to pay; 5. Compact – it is written as straightforwardly as [...]

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We get the great man’s words: This was a transaction relating to Indian assets that India wanted to tax, and thought it could tax. But it was recorded ‘elsewhere’ in a tax haven structure. And the result is that the legal form of recording it ‘elsewhere’ has meant that Inida’s laws have been subverted and [...]

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Gosh, isn’t this interesting? Vodafone has won a landmark tax dispute in India over its $11bn acquisition of a 67pc stake in Hutchison Whampoa’s Indian mobile unit, which later became Vodafone Essar. Another Private Eye/Ritchie nonsense ground into the dust. The Indian Supreme Court ruled that the taxman had no jurisdiction over the British mobile [...]

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You’ll recall, you well informed person you, the fuss that Nick Shaxson made over the City’s Cash last year? How appalling it was that the City of London had some huge secret war chest of cash that was used to prop up the entirely evil system of late financial capitalism? How the newly enobled Baron [...]

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But the new that ratings agencies – the discredited Standard & Poors, Moody’s and Fitch – are to rate the success of hospitals in future really says all that needs to be known about The Tories’ objectives: the plan is very clearly to prepare businesses for sale. Ignore clinical quality, care or any other factor that impacts health outcomes; just look to the financial bottom [...]

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A plan for #growth: close the tax gap; green quantitative easing; 25% of pension contributions invested in job creation. Go for it #Labour There it is in all it’s glory. Reduce fiscal stimulus by collecting more taxes, print money to spend it and mandate that 25% of all pension plans be handed over to venture capitalists. Anti-Keynesian, [...]

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debt is not nearly as high as the Tories claim and the need for debt reduction not nearly as pressing as the Tories say Who in buggery is saying anything at all about debt reduction? The current game is about stopping the national debt from spiralling ever upwards out of control. It’s about slowing the [...]

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So we’re told that social democracy is the only way to go now that we’ve come to the limits to growth. And that Baumol’s Cost Disease (which, amazingly, he actually gets right, or right enough) means that the State will have to expand. However, two slight problems with his analysis. The Guardian’s reported that Ed [...]

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This. Yes, productivity in services increases at a slower rate than productivity in manufacturing. Thus, inevitably, given that average wages are set by average productivity, services become more expensive compared to manufactures. I’ve made this point around here a number of times. Ritchie then says that, as a result of Baumol’s analysis, services should be [...]

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Blair is legitimately taking advantage of laws allowing him to limit what his companies and partnerships must disclose. “It is baffling; these accounts make remarkably little sense,” said accountancy expert Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, a firm that scrutinises company finances. “This limited disclosure is not within the spirit of the law. “ It’s [...]

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1.    Where to locate a head office. This requires deciding in which country a head office will be located. Sometimes the decision relates to what are called ‘intermediate holding companies’ instead. The importance of the decision is determined by the fact that a company usually has to pay tax in the country in which it [...]

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