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We investigate the real-world impact of the UK tax and legal system, expose avoidance and abuse, and propose practical reforms.

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HMRC errors let a notorious tax avoider escape a £14m penalty I’m being sued for $795m. By a fugitive fraudster. In Wyoming. Tax scam of the day: Paul Baxendale-Walker and Minerva Services The stupidest tax: complicated, costs businesses £m, and raises zero money. Let’s abolish stamp duty. – Tax Policy Associates

Latest reports

Tax marginal rates - looking up and down the cliff edge
25 October 2026 Analysis

The UK tax calculator that shows you what you’re really paying

Updated for the 28 October 2026 Budget, this calculator shows your take-home pay after tax and National Insurance, in Scotland or the rest of the UK. It covers pensions, child benefit, student loans and childcare, and you can add benefits in kind, pension income, savings, dividends and capital gains. Other calculators do most of that. […]
Iain Clifford Stamp in a March 2026 video: "And there will be a lawsuit against Dan Neidle in the United States"
24 October 2026 Investigations

I’m being sued for $795m. By a fugitive fraudster. In Wyoming. Under anti-Mafia law.

I’m being sued for $795m in a US federal court in Wyoming, under a law designed to take down the Mafia. The man suing me is a fugitive British fraudster called Iain Clifford Stamp, who says I caused him to lose $120m by exposing his tax fraud scheme. UPDATED 29 October 2026 with an order […]
Chart showing UK bank tax compared with other countries'
22 October 2026 Policy

Banks say they’re overtaxed. The TUC says they’re undertaxed. Who’s right?

There are widespread reports that the Budget will increase tax on banks. This follows claims from the TUC that banks are under-taxed, and claims from UK Finance that they’re overtaxed. We’ve compared bank taxation in the UK and eight other countries, examined how much bank profits have really risen, and assessed who would pay the […]
A row of terraced houses in Oxford
8 October 2026 Policy

Badenoch’s inheritance tax cut could cost £11bn – almost twice the advertised price

The Conservatives propose exempting family homes from inheritance tax and increasing the tax-free allowance to £500,000 per person. They say this would cost £6bn a year. Our analysis suggests £7.6bn to £10.8bn,, once we account for the incentive to hold on to homes and move other wealth into housing. The problem is that the proposal […]
A chart showing a massive increase in capital gains tax receipts in the last year. The article explains why this is, in fact, a very bad result.
6 October 2026 Policy

Capital gains tax reform was right. Now it’s dead.

For the third Budget in a row, everyone’s talking about capital gains tax. The Chancellor, John Healey, says he won’t give “any answers or signals that will fuel Budget speculation”, but in the same Sunday Times interview noted that the UK has the “lowest capital gains tax (CGT) of any European G7 nation”. To understand […]
Manchester City stadium
1 October 2026 Analysis

Did Manchester City cheat HMRC out of £12m?

Manchester City’s rule-breaking may go beyond football. The independent Commission found that the club inflated its income, concealed expenses and paid a key individual through a sham consultancy. Leaked documents identify him as City’s manager, Roberto Mancini, with payments routed to his company, Sparkleglow Holdings Ltd. We believe the evidence points to £12m in unpaid […]
VAT-free shopping doesn't generate £2.6bn of tax - it creates a £600m loss
28 September 2026 Analysis

A £2.6bn lobbyist fairytale: economic consultancy Cebr sold VAT-free shopping as a tax cut that pays for itself

The retail lobby wants tourists to be able to claim a VAT refund for their UK shopping. So they commissioned Cebr to produce a report claiming it would deliver a multi-billion pound boost to the Exchequer. It convinced Sadiq Khan and Kemi Badenoch. But we rebuilt their model and found four fatal errors – once […]
Gates of Providence House
22 September 2026 Investigations

Nick Candy, Suneil Setiya, the UK’s biggest house sale, and £18.5m of avoided stamp duty

Nick Candy sold Providence House in Chelsea this May for a reported £265m to Suneil Setiya, a hedge fund manager. It’s the most expensive house ever sold in Britain. The way the house was sold avoided about £18.5m of stamp duty. Ordinarily, you’d expect £32m of stamp duty on a £265m house, but thanks to […]
Bar chart showing the shift below each round number from £1m to £6m: Statistically notable positive shifts below round numbers are observed at £2m (around +21 percentage points) and £3.5m (around +43 percentage points), while estimates at £4.5m and above have very wide confidence intervals. The shift below each round number Percentage points Y-axis: -50, -25, 0, 25, 50, 75 Values (approximate bar height and error bar range): £1m (blue): 6 (error bar: 0 to 8) £1.5m (blue): 4 (error bar: -2 to 9) £2m (red): 21 (error bar: 11 to 29) £2.5m (red): 11 (error bar: -2 to 24) £3m (blue): -3 (error bar: -18 to 13) £3.5m (red): 43 (error bar: 20 to 61) £4m (blue): -7 (error bar: -29 to 22) £4.5m (blue): 1 (error bar: -26 to 45) £5m (red): 34 (error bar: -7 to 62) £5.5m (blue): 17 (error bar: -20 to 56) £6m: ~0 (error bar: -41 to 51)
22 September 2026 Analysis

What effect is the mansion tax having on house prices?

We’ve found the first hard evidence that the mansion tax is impacting the property market – house sale prices are bunching just below the £2m mansion tax threshold. Since the tax was announced, the share of nearby sales priced just below £2m has risen sharply, while the share at exactly £2m has fallen. We think […]
a map of England showing the projected impact of a £1.5m mansion tax
7 July 2026 Analysis

What if Andy Burnham lowered the mansion tax threshold to £1.5m?

The November 2025 Budget introduced a “mansion tax” – formally, the “high value council tax surcharge” – an annual charge on homes worth £2m or more. The Mail on Sunday reported in July 2026 that Andy Burnham might lower the threshold to £1.5m. The Times reported in September 2026 that it was under active consideration. […]
Model showing number of pensioner households potentially impacted by inheritance tax
19 September 2026 Analysis

The hidden reach of inheritance tax: one in five pensioner households

Fewer than 5% of estates currently pay inheritance tax. But that statistic counts the dead; if we want to understand why inheritance tax is so unpopular, we should count the living instead. We’ve built a model to do that, across England and Wales and in every Parliamentary constituency. Our model shows that, by April 2027, […]
Andrew Griffith says the corporate tax return has 985 boxes
17 September 2026 Analysis

How complex is the corporation tax return? And is it getting worse?

In his first major speech as Shadow Chancellor, Andrew Griffith said that the UK corporate tax return has 985 boxes. I used the same number in an article I wrote earlier in the year for the Financial Times, and so BBC Verify contacted me today to check the figure. It’s wrong. Depending on how you […]

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