As many will know legislation to create a General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR) will be included in the Finance Act 2013. HM Revenue & Customs has now announced the membership of the interim committee that has been appointed to review, amend if necessary and approve the initial guidance notes which will accompany the legislation . I am pleased to have been asked to serve on that committee.
Wonder what the per diem is there then?
And don\’t forget: this really is how you are ruled. Yes, Ritchie.
How do we get Timmy on the committee ?
We’re fucked.
It will be harder for him to criticise a committee or others on it if he is on the committee himself. In the tent pissing out, and all that.
They’ve got him in to shut him up. Oldest trick and he has walked into it.
I think Bill Dodwell has described the tax gap stuff as ‘rubbish’ so that little meeting should be interesting.
Like idiot zombies rising, “must hate something with funny quips”.
Why don’t you start again and ask why tax avoidance rules are such hate that idiots like you bang on about it?
Is it just Richard Murphy you don’t like? Fair play, but it makes you lot a dick.
Sucking on worstall’s privileged tit is no argument. Murphy is winning, and winning because you tits have run out of ideas.
Arnald, I’m sorry to say that I agree with you. He is winning. People like him always do. And libertarians are rarely fond of the Establishment.
@ Arnald – I’d say most people commenting here value the rule of law which includes certainty as a necessary condition. Therefore Murphy’s ideas are anathema because they violate this principle.
As to whether Murphy has any principles of his own? Somewhat doubtful.
It’s worse than just Ritchie. Rob Clayton is from Compass and David McNair is from Save the Children.
So 3 high tax, more regulation pressure group campaigners, but no one from the TPA.
Arnald: “Like idiot zombies rising, “must hate something with funny quips”.
OK, we’ll do it the Arnald Way: Hate something with unfunny stupid.
Being a Yank I don’t claim to know much about the whole peerage thingy, but from what little I do know it appears that Ritchie is demented enough to qualify for one.
Oh, by the way, I wouldn’t worry too much about the effect of all this. Ritchie is joining a committee that is going to review the guidance notes of another committee so said guidance notes can be passed on to another committee up the bureaucratic food chain. The process is involved precisely so taxing authorities and gather the opinions of the noisiest of the fools and then, after a decent interval, discard them. It’s done to let busybodies like Ritchie feel that they’re accomplishing something while the adults in the room do the heavy lifting.
If it is the HMRC cannot budgets etc be FOI’d?
BTW what are the affiliations of the Convenor Graham Aaronson QC?
Aaronson:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2164881/Stop-tax-dodgers-riots-streets-warns-architect-new-anti-avoidance-rules.html
As a tax barrister he will want lots more complexity, and he will want to shut down the sort of tax planning schemes peddled by accountants that lots of people can use.
But he will want to keep loopholes that the seriously wealthy, advised by senior tax barristers, can exploit.
Being on the committee won’t stop him criticising. My experiences of committees is that even deranged lunatics can get their ideas accepted on some aspects of a proposal under investigation.
Regardless of links to reality or the 21st century.
On a government committee, even idiocy is a focus group whose views must be sought, laid down in meeting notes, be considered and then finally discarded as the outright idiocy that they are.
Don’t think of Ritchie as an idiot, just think of him as the representative of all the idiots who couldn’t make it.
This is a success for Ritchie, no two ways about it. Forget the stuff about bringing him inside the tent – that is to misunderstand his motivation. Campaigning is his BUSINESS, and his presence on this notionally important sounding committee gives him CREDIBILITY. Murphy doesn’t actually want all these tax issues to be solved in the way he suggests – firstly, all the counterarguments about how idiotic his ideas are in the first place would be shown to be entirely correct, and secondly, he would have done himself out of a job.
So this is just great: he got to give evidence to the House of Lords (on telly), he got to join a committee of the great and the good (and there are a couple of people on it who might commission him to write some shit report or other), and most of all, because (a) the committee is quite polite and (b) the political mood favours the anti-corporate, pro-individual Ritchie, he is starting to look like the real deal. Of course, anyone with a smattering of analytical skills can tell that he very much is not the real deal, but this means he’s ARRIVED, very much so. Don’t pretend this is a victory for those who believe is reasonably low taxation.
Arnald (#4) You despicable blowhard (To quote your description of me amongst others) Ritchie has won precisely sod all – he has corralled enough useful idiots (people such as yourself) to agree with a wholly false narrative that equates investment with expenditure, assumes the state can and must run everything, and is seemingly heedless of any history before 1978.
A ‘victory’ perhaps, but an utterly pyrrhic one, as the flood of productive people fleeing the prospect of a government in which he has influence proves. If you tax 100 percent of F#@k all – I’ll leave your hyperactive brain to do the maths.