I notice today from my hospital bed that HMRC have published their neoliberally misrepresentative “Measuring (dishonestly) Tax Gaps” (not sic).
Of course, this document is a pure work of pure fiction and cannot be relied upon. My own tax gap calculations are proof of that. But even within HMRC’s delusional fantasy world they are woefully inconsistent and dishonest.
Having only read this document this morning, it is glaringly obvious to me that they have changed their estimates of the tax gap for previous years. This won’t be obvious to you dear reader because HMRC fail to mention this fact on no fewer than 100 occasions within the document.
But the worst thing is that HMRC fail to mention clearly, not once, but on multiple instances on no fewer than 30 separate pages of an 80 page document that they have revised prior years’ figures.
This is tantamount to lying and you might call it lying if you like because it is lying. I defy anybody to read the document and spot on pages 3, 6, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 39, 41, 42, 43, 54, 55, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 77 and 78 where HMRC mentions that prior year tax gap estimates have been revised.
Of particular moral failure are pages 18 to 22 where it is nigh on impossible to miss a single sentence in which HMRC have failed to mention that they have changed their previous years’ tax gap estimates in line with improved data and methodologies!
And look at pages 10 and 16. They do not state unambigouously that they will revise the estimates for 2011/12 and 2012/13 because they are currently projections! They are not openly telling us that not only are they lying to us now, they will lie to us all again in the future!
Candidly, that is simply not good enough from an authority where honesty, transparency and consistency are the required standards for conduct.In fact, I will go so far as to tell you to call them liars.
The Justice for Taxes Network 
Welcome back Murphy, we’ve missed you…
Welcome back! I’m looking forward to being properly informed again on these critical matters. We know that Inland Revenue is an anagram of “Unlevied, Er, Ann” which is proof enough that they are failing to raise any tax whatsoever and at this rate we’re going to have to find a new prefix to “illion” to define it. It’s a ruddy disgrace.
Let’s be clear, the mere fact that HMRC did not have Murphy, even in his delicate state, write, edit and review this so-called ‘report’, is all we need to know about the neoliberal sophistry contained within. Please note, this is not my opinion, this is an established fact within civil-society.
Candidly, anything short of Murphy being ensconced at No. 11, sui generis, is nothing but madness……….
Murphy
I did notice, with some chagrin, that a new tax blog had emerged in which the blogger adopted a ridiculous pseudonym – I can’t recall it now, but it was something like the Jolly on Prawn. You contributed a characteristically authoritative guest blog which I was enraptured to read. This was then savaged in the comments by a pack of ravenous neoliberals and Jolly on Prawn refused to delete them, instead resorting to some pathetic half-hearted [edited] tag.
Anyone who hosts a blog that allows gratuitous insults of the posters is an enemy of free speech. I’m sure you if you had been in charge there would have been relentless use of the delete button, so that the essential consensus would have emerged. That’s democracy and it’s what civil society demands in this world of far right censorship and suppression of opposition to their sick views.
I shan’t be supping at the Jolly Prawn tavern again.
Hey Murphy,
great to hear from you again.
We`ve missed you; academia missed you and there ist still a lot to be done in the tax field, especially since 99 % of the tax profession has no knowledge of the tax law. Keep on fighting against those avoiders.
Regards,
Bill
Hey Murphy,
are you still alive ?
The tax worlds (still) needs your advice …. there are so many tax dodgers out there who need to be put in jail. These damn tax avoiding people dont understand what kind of criminals they are …. we all understood that there is no difference between avoidance and evasion (we learned that from our dear friend ms. M. Hodge), but they dont understand this. So ignorant ….
Love,
Paul