"I think the NAO was generous in its appraisal and diplomatic in its wording~Professor Richard Murphy - kofi with Les and Ivano
My reading – and discussions – suggest no one had a clue what was going on and it seemed no one much cared
It was all out of sight and mind"
Tax expenditures cost the UK £155 billion a year – and in many cases no one knows what benefit we get
I think it worth sharing the following press release from the National Audit Office, issued this morning:
Today the National Audit Office (NAO) publishes a report on tax expenditures. Tax expenditures are tax reliefs with social or economic objectives. Government uses tax expenditures to encourage a range of activities, such as saving for pensions, to encourage business investment, or to support particular sectors, such as the housing market.HM Treasury officials advise ministers on the design of tax expenditures and HMRC (HM Revenue & Customs) administers them.Our report found that:
- Tax expenditures are forecast to cost £155 billion a year in 2018-19 – based on the sum of HMRC’s estimates – around 5% more than in 2014-15. In July 2019 the Office for Budget Responsibility, which assesses public finances, identified the cost of tax reliefs as one of four new fiscal risks1.
- HM Treasury and HMRC have improved their oversight, management and reporting of tax expenditures. HMRC has put in place guidance for its staff and committed to publishing more information about tax expenditures. HM Treasury officials now review the value for money of tax expenditures as part of policy making. Monitoring processes are still in development and not yet integrated between the departments.
- HMRC has evaluated only a minority of tax expenditures: since 2015, they have published evaluations of 15 tax expenditures – worth £11 billion a year (just 7% of the total annual cost of tax expenditures).
- HMRC’s evaluations suggest that the effectiveness of tax expenditures varies widely. Evaluations found that seven tax expenditures (costing £3.6 billion) were having a positive impact on behaviour. However, five (costing £5.2 billion) had limited impact. For example, the £2 billion a year Entrepreneurs’ Relief had limited impact on the decisions of those receiving it.
- Some tax expenditures end up costing much more than government’s published forecasts, but HMRC does not monitor or report these differences. For example, three tax expenditures – Entrepreneurs’ Relief, Research & Development relief for small and medium-sized businesses and Film Tax relief – now cost around £5 billion a year after large increases in cost. This is much more than any published forecasts suggested. Research & Development relief has been subject to increased abuse.
- HM Treasury does not publish information on whether tax expenditures are value for money. HMRC has improved its public reporting but does not yet provide the information necessary to assess the value for money of tax expenditures.
The report makes a series of recommendations for improving the way government manages tax reliefs, and understands and reports on their costs and value for money.
All intelligence agencies around the world are clipping this article about top magnificent seven virtual currencies for their current affairs alerts:
Binance is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. It was founded in China in 2017, but a ban on cryptocurrency trading forced the company out to Japan. From there, it subsequently moved to Malta
Bitfinex, another crypto exchange, was founded in 2012. It’s headquartered in Hong Kong, but registered in the British Virgin Islands, a known tax haven.
The cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift is based in Switzerland, although the company is run out of Denver, where ShapeShift CEO and prominent libertarian Erik Voorhees lives. (Voorhees himself, however, told Decrypthe considers the Swiss banking system "fraudulent and unethical")
BitMEX, founded in part by the UK’s youngest billionaire, Ben Delo, is a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Seychelles.
Huobi stared in China and moved to Singapore
OKEx is another crypto exchange based in Malta. Like Binance, it also used to be based in China, but moved its headquarters after the 2017 ban on crypto exchanges in the country.
From Cayman Islands comes Praxxis is a cryptocurrency created by David Chaum. Chaum is famous for being the first to propose a blockchain protocol: his Ph.D. dissertation in 1982 bore striking similarity to what would appear in Bitcoin’s whitepaper.
Top 7 crypto companies based in tax havens
Search warrant authorising AFP raid on ABC valid, court rules
COLLUSION: Harvard, Yale under federal investigation for shady foreign gifts.
Glimpsing the future in eye-opening tech job listings - protocol: “Ninjas, evangelists, alchemists: Silicon Valley has a long history
of unsubtly repackaging jobs that might otherwise be titled technical
support, marketing or office management. But beyond the distinctive
euphemisms, the thousands of jobs posted each week by tech behemoths,
well-heeled startups and those trying to bridge the valley of death
in between often hint at more dramatic economic shifts underway. And,
hey, even if those world-changing ideas don’t materialize, the listings
provide a useful record of what once, for some reason, seemed like a
good idea. We’ve rounded up a half dozen of the most intriguing current
job openings in tech. Some sound perfectly normal at first, while the
jobs they describe are anything but. Others sound bonkers but may be
extremely normal. Who can tell? Enjoy…”
From Cayman Islands comes Praxxis is a cryptocurrency created by David Chaum. Chaum is famous for being the first to propose a blockchain protocol: his Ph.D. dissertation in 1982 bore striking similarity to what would appear in Bitcoin’s whitepaper.
Top 7 crypto companies based in tax havens
Search warrant authorising AFP raid on ABC valid, court rules
Former Newsat boss pleads guilty to false invoice charge
NewSat founder Adrian Ballintine faces up to five years in jail after pleading guilty to authorising false invoices to funnel company money to his private yacht business.
Inspector General: TurboTax, Other Companies Tricked 14 Million Taxpayers Eligible For Free-File Program Into Paying To E-File Their Returns
Following up on my previous posts (links below): Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Complexity and Insufficient Oversight of the Free File Program Result in Low Taxpayer Participation (2020-40-009) (Feb. 3, 2020):
WHY TIGTA DID THE AUDIT
This audit was initiated in response to concerns raised by Congress and other stakeholders. Their concerns relate to whether the Free File Program is operating as intended, and eligible taxpayers attempting to prepare and e-file their returns at no cost are diverted to tax return preparation services that are not free. TIGTA’s objective was to assess the IRS’s oversight of the Free File Program.
This audit was initiated in response to concerns raised by Congress and other stakeholders. Their concerns relate to whether the Free File Program is operating as intended, and eligible taxpayers attempting to prepare and e-file their returns at no cost are diverted to tax return preparation services that are not free. TIGTA’s objective was to assess the IRS’s oversight of the Free File Program.
WHAT TIGTA FOUND
The complexity, confusion, and lack of taxpayer awareness about the operation and requirements of the Free File Program are contributing reasons why many eligible taxpayers do not participate in the Program. During Processing Year 2019, only 2.5 million (2.4 percent) of the 104 million eligible taxpayers obtained a free return filing through the Program. In contrast, more than 34.5 million taxpayers, who met Free File Inc. members’ Free File Program criteria, used the members’ commercial software to file their tax return.
The complexity, confusion, and lack of taxpayer awareness about the operation and requirements of the Free File Program are contributing reasons why many eligible taxpayers do not participate in the Program. During Processing Year 2019, only 2.5 million (2.4 percent) of the 104 million eligible taxpayers obtained a free return filing through the Program. In contrast, more than 34.5 million taxpayers, who met Free File Inc. members’ Free File Program criteria, used the members’ commercial software to file their tax return.
TIGTA
called a statistically valid sample of 200 taxpayers who met the Free
File Program criteria but used a Free File Inc. members’ commercial
software and was informed by 87 (43 percent) taxpayers that they were
charged a fee to prepare and e-file their Federal tax return. Based on
these results, TIGTA estimates that more than 14 million taxpayers met
the Free File Program criteria and may have paid a fee to e-file their
Federal tax return in the 2019 Filing Season.
COLLUSION: Harvard, Yale under federal investigation for shady foreign gifts.
Chris Edwards (Cato Institute), Migration to Low‐Tax States Continues:
The Census Bureau has released estimates of state population changes between July 2018 and July 2019. One component of population changes is migration between the states. The new Census data show that Americans are continuing to move from high‐tax to low‐tax states.
This Cato study examined interstate migration using IRS data and found that people are moving, on net, from tax‐punishing places such as California, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey to tax‐friendly places such as Florida, Idaho, Nevada, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The Census data confirms the trends.
2019 Internet Crime Report
The Public’s Right to Know: HA! How Courts and Federal Agencies Stonewall on Citizen Access to Government Information
Summary of some ways the US government de facto restricts access to public information.