Tax, illicit finance, weapons and armed conflict. Ex-@conflictarm, ex-@amnesty, ex-@UN, ex-some other stuff.
Joined March 2011
- Tweets2.5K
- Following315
- Followers872
- Likes125
Pinned Tweet
Pleased to have contributed to this @DeSmog investigation tracking 🇬🇧supermarket sea bass: the food and climate insanity of selling 🇹🇷farmed fish, fed on...fresh West African fish, despite supermarkets' denials. Our suppers fuelling 🇸🇳🇲🇷🇬🇲 food insecurity @hazel_healy
🔴 NEW 🔴
UK Supermarket Seabass Linked to Devastating Overfishing in Senegal
✍️ @hazel_healy and Brigitte Wear
desmog.com/2025/05/22/reveal…
Spreadsheets aren't very sexy as a subject for political journalism. But I think this is actually a significant story. Like everyone, politicians and the media deploy data strategically. They rarely revise their views - or even notice - when the data is withdrawn or revised.
People's unpaid debts to HMRC is a real problem. But we need to make sure their debt collection efforts are targeting big recalcitrant holdouts, not just taxpayers - some ill, incapacitated, distressed - who have just got themselves in a mess.
The Budget may expand @HMRCgovuk powers to recover small tax debts directly from taxpayers' bank accounts. HMRC wrote off £13bn of tax debt last year: roughly the budget of the British Army. But rising tax debt also reflects real hardship. Our director talks to @TimesRadio
No, these are **not** taxes on online giants. They ensure that foreign traders selling to UK consumers **via** these platforms pay the due VAT. Unless @mattlynnwriter is in favour of the Chinese companies currently undercutting UK ones by evading VAT with spoof UK establishments?
When he presents his first Budget later this month, Chancellor John Healey won't have many 'bash the rich' or 'hammer big business' levies to cheer up his backbenchers. A stiff rise in capital gains tax has been ruled out and the threshold for the mansion tax most probably won't be lowered.
It looks likely, however, that Healey will introduce an online tax crackdown. But is there a chance this could backfire?
In the Budget, Healey is expected to announce that online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay and China's Temu, will be forced to be responsible for collecting the VAT due on the products sold on their platforms.
✍️ Matthew Lynn
Article | spectator.com/article/cracki… | @mattlynnwriter
@mattlynnwriter may find it hard to believe there will be extra revenue, but when in 2021 the platforms started collecting previously evaded VAT for foreign sellers, it raised £1.5bn extra tax a year. Five times what the Treasury had estimated.
committees.parliament.uk/pub…
No, he literally didn’t
theguardian.com/news/2026/oc…
This summer, 88-year-old property magnate David Reuben moved from the U.K. to Monaco after the country scrapped its “non-domicile” tax status.
bit.ly/3UcSh6Q
Nope, David Reuben left in 2014
taxwatchuk.org/how-many-time…
Of the £200-£250 billion total around £110 billion is accounted for by some 50 identified people. Some of the prominent ones are listed below
- David Reuben – ~£14bn moved to Monaco in 2026.
- John Fredriksen – ~£16.9bn, shifted his business/residence to the UAE in 2025.
- Lakshmi Mittal – ~£26.4bn, left UK residence in 2025.
- Nassef Sawiris – ~£7.3bn, relinquished UK residency recently and is now resident in Italy/Abu Dhabi.
- Guillaume Pousaz – ~£5.9bn, moved to Monaco in 2025.
- Ian and Richard Livingstone – ~£5.7bn combined, switched their usual residence from UK to Monaco in 2025.
- Alan Howard – ~£2.5bn, became Swiss resident in 2025.
- Christian Angermayer – ~£0.9bn, moved to Switzerland in 2024.
- Alfie Best – ~£0.94bn, moved to Monaco in 2024.
- Lady Ballyedmond and family – ~£0.9bn, recently moved to Italy.
- Daren Whitaker – ~£0.8bn, moved to Monaco in 2025. Monaco
- Chris Rokos – ~£3bn, moved to Greece in 2026.
This is consistent with recent analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which suggests that billionaires with a total net worth of £120 billion have left the UK since Labour came to power in 2024.
Newspapers report that a UK billionaire left the UK "this summer", driven offshore by Labour tax changes...
...actually left the UK in 2014.
BREAKING: this week's papers have been full of a story that Britain's 2nd-richest person left the UK for Monaco this summer, driven offshore by non-dom and other tax changes.
Only one problem: according to official docs, he left the UK over a decade ago.
taxwatchuk.org/how-many-time…
Literally not @iealondon . It's the "halving of smoking rates" in action.
Notable silence from Palantir's boss about the actual main allegations in @JulietteGarside @CICTAR_Tax 's report: whether some of its UK contracts are being booked tax-efficiently in the US, and the slim (7% cost-plus) margins the US group pays its UK subsidiary for services.
Big day over at the Guardian. They've uncovered a company paying its staff.
Today's exposé reveals Palantir's latest diabolical scheme: give employees shares, watch employees pay tax on them at HIGHER rates than corporation tax, hand the Treasury MORE money overall. As tax dodges go, I’ll admit it needs work.
The legal instrument behind this outrage? A relief introduced by the previous Labour Government to encourage employee ownership and collect more tax overall. The Guardian has bravely blown the whistle on the UK tax code.
As only the Grauniad can pull off, the facts that dismantle their own headline can be found at the bottom of the article: Palantir paid $148m in UK employment taxes last year.
@DanNeidle - who regularly seems to end actual tax avoiders' careers for sport - looked at this claim and called it “the worst tax avoidance scheme ever.”
We’ll await the Guardian’s correction with the usual confidence.
Mike Lewis retweeted
The tax gap is getting worse, and by more than HMRC previously thought.
For a government that has promised to raise nearly £10bn more tax revenues annually by the end of this parliament by *shrinking* the tax gap, today's figures are a serious problem.
More analysis shortly.
I can't think of a clearer demonstration of monopoly. If you are the only one making sandwiches, then you can start randomly putting turds in some sandwiches, and people will still buy your sandwiches.
Excellent report but this part (highlighted) doesn't seem correct? Regulations under Canada's United Nations Act have prohibited "Canadians outside Canada" from facilitating arms supplies to Sudan since 2004? @CBCNews @justshayxo @Ivan_Angelovski cbc.ca/news/world/sudan-rsf-…
So Matt Brittin, former @Google EMEA president, was today confirmed as the new chair of the BBC.
Here he is back in 2016, being questioned by the @CommonsPAC about Google's tax affairs, and failing to remember how much he was paid.
Safe pair of hands...
Re-upping 🧵in light of an imminent Gulf test of this legal question. It might surprise you that 🇬🇧&🇺🇸 laws of war manuals list energy infrastructure as legitimate military objects of attack (though the ICC and these countries' politicians seem to disagree, at least when it's 🇷🇺)
Also appreciate all the tax profession experts, always quick to critique technical errors, who are today calling out the @thetimes' schoolboy conflation of corporation tax and income tax when calculating the tax bills of the super-rich...
Oh wait. 🦗🦗🦗
thetimes.com/money/tax/artic…?
Today @thetimes publishes their annual Tax List: a list of the 'unsung heroes' who are the UK's 100 biggest taxpayers. Or are they? @taxwatch's response 🧵
#PSA: Christmas is a tricky time. A quick seasonal reminder that:
Most people in mental distress don’t want or benefit from advice or ‘solutions’. Even yours.
Please acknowledge their problems, and ask them what they need.
That is all. Ho ho ho 🎄🎄🎄
This footage is from Bolivia.
Somewhat worrying lack of fact-checking from the senior Africa adviser to the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
“Il essaie de labourer mon terrain mais c’est moi qui sème et c’est moi qui récolterai. Les gens préfèreront toujours l’original à la copie. Plus il en fait dans ce domaine-là, mieux je me porte” - Jean-Marie le Pen
Unworkable policies No 5642: what exactly will be on the Home Office cheat-sheet for border officials to determine which items of someone’s jewellery does or doesn’t “have sentimental value” @alexjjnorris ? Both grim and absurd.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2025…
