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I am unashamedly quoting from the comments made by Nicholas (Lord) Stern noted in the Guardian this morning.

The indifference within discounting is wrong for these reasons.
….
It would seem that Lord Stern agrees. We are making progress.

Well, no, not really. For Stern is arguing about which discount rate to use, Ritchie is arguing there shouldn’t be one. Which are rather different propositions.

17 thoughts on “Tee Hee”

  1. Let’s say you calculate the cost of fixing the climate, undiscounted, and the answer is £100 trillion. And let’s say you could cut a cheque today for that sum, or you could pay as you go.

    Under Ritchie’s preferred basis, nobody would cut the cheque. They would simply wait until the bills are due, because £100 trn tomorrow is less than £100 trn today.

    Congratulations, Ritchie, you just incentivised everyone to procrastinate for as long as possible.

  2. Accounts for TRUK and Finance for the Future now available at Companies House for those that like to nose at such things.

  3. the Finance for the Future accounts make for an interesting read.

    The LLP did nothing between 2012 and ‘the 2019’ (sic) when it got a grant from the ‘Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation, a grant repeated in 2020 when it also got a grant from The Marmot Charitable Trust.

    Colin Hines – a member of the LLP – is being paid to work for the LLP. Indeed, he’s getting the bulk of the money coming in.

    The LLP received grants totalling £18,000 in 2020. Hines has been paid £17,800 for work consisting of ‘work required to meet the conditions of the grants’

    No doubt the charities handing out the grants have the conditions we’ve seen elsewhere that grants are not given to individuals but it’s obvious that the grants are just being shovelled straight into Hines’ pocket.

    Generally, an LLP doesn’t ‘pay’ its Members, profits are allocated, so they seem to be playing a bit fast and loose with the rules.

    Tax Research

    The accounts have a logo. Spud’s feeling very smug, his signature has become very grandiose.

    He’s bought something, possibly a new car? £4,454.

    He got £12,737 from donations from blog readers, £2,775 from the Fair Tax Mark, £1,500 from City University and £2,250 from TJUK.

    The IMF and World Bank are (apparently) interested in his project ‘Making Tax Work’ for which he was paid over £8k by the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency.

    He’s stopped disclosing the profit split.

  4. Spud has been appearing on his you tube channel a bit lately.

    I already hit him with “Do not recommend Channel” the once but the rest of you might want to do so if you haven’t already.

  5. Someone’s not even trying.

    Yes – how hard could it be to work an “R” in there: Responsive, Rational, Reporting… even Ritchie, if you had to!

  6. Don’t profits in an Llp get allocated according to each partner’s capital share? I suppose there can be salaried partners but that is usually to enable them to buy their partnership share. Obviously Mr Hines is getting the best legal and tax advice on the market

  7. ‘you just incentivised everyone to procrastinate for as long as possible.’

    Thanks aaa. I always appreciate another reason to do nothing about the climate.

  8. Poor old spud. £3k from fair tax mark. He has to rely on 13k of charity from the oddballs on his blog. To be fair that 13k number is reasonably impressive from a small echo chamber.

  9. What’s the betting that if anyone ever manages to teach him what discounting is and how it works, it won’t be long before he claims he invented the concept?

  10. @samuelbuca, spot on. I wonder how Murphy passed his accountancy exams without understanding discounting.

    @Andrew C, the profit split is disclosed in note 8 of Tax Research LLP accounts, it is still 99% Ritchie, 1% Jacqueline.

    So his annual income is:
    – £30k from Tax Research LLP
    – £10k from Finance for the Future
    – a professor salary from Sheffield one day a week (starting salary is just over £60k so say £12k) https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hr/thedeal/professorial/structure
    – money from the Corporate Accountability Network (grants of £48k are mentioned but not not clear how much is paid to Ritchie)
    https://www.t*xresearch.org.uk/Blog/about/

    So probably £70-100k of income. And he is still appealing for donations!

  11. Probably also true to say that Ritchie is arguing that a discount rate may apply, but that the correct rate is zero ! Quibbling maybe on the words used ?

  12. @Sam Jones

    Ah, well spotted on the profit split, my skim reading missed that.

    “So probably £70-100k of income. And he is still appealing for donations!”

    It’s why he point blank refuses to publish his tax return. Asking for donations because he’s so hard up hardly carries the same weight when you earn 2 – 3 times the national average wage.

    His original plea for donations was “I’m hard up”, then it changed to “I will use them to pay for my YouTube channel”. Now he seems to have stopped making videos (nothing since 4th September), so presumably it’s just “give me money, I’m a greedy fat bastard”.

  13. Yes, his finances are distinctly suspicious. He’s 63, he’s enjoyed a decent professional income for nearly 40 years, and he’s appealing for donations!

    And in another blog yesterday he’s also demanding increases in the state pension. I think we can assume his private pension isn’t up to much!

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