Who are the Taxpayer’s Alliance?

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2008/03/17/who-are-the-taxpayer’s-alliance/

Who are the Taxpayer’s Alliance?

The Guardian carried an article under this title this morning. The question is a good one. Especially as they are specifically contrasted with the Tax Justice Network, to whom I am an adviser.

The answer is raised in a media context: how do they get so much publicity. They claim the answer is:

“We are always available 24 hours a day,” says [chief executive] Elliott. “We put the work in so we get good coverage.”

Actually, I don’t buy that. Lot’s of people are available 24 hours a day and don’t get as much coverage. TJN, for start, even though we (unlike the TPA) actually try to provide considered analysis and real research on stories.

The reason why the TPA get coverage is much easier to explain. Take chairman Andrew Allum’s profile for a start. As he says:

He left the [Conservative] party in 2003, having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics.

Put it another way: he moved further Right than the right wing of the Tories. He moved out of the political mainstream and into the Neo-Con, libertarian hinterlands. He gave up analysis at that time. He took up government bashing (by which I mean, all government, not just the government of the moment) and that covered his anti-tax agenda (I mean all tax, not particular tax).

And we have a media that supports this view; laps it up and feeds it as objective comment to the British public. Just look at the Sunday Times budget supplement yesterday, which featured on ’stealth taxes’ and actually quoted a women claiming she was questioning the value of her £16,000 a year job because she was going to suffer a £27 tax increase this coming year.

This is crass reporting. The story is complete rubbish. She simply won’t notice the difference. Her family as a whole will be £88 a year worse off (but I note increases in child allowance weren’t taken into account, so that probably overstates the case) but the media wanted to find an anti-tax story. The Tax Payer’s Alliance pedals them this sort of nonsensical yarn knowing that no-one will ever act on what they say. Which is precisely why the Tories said yesterday that there were no grounds for cutting taxes.

Unlike the TPA, the TJN works in the real world. We talk to real politicians, from the Conservatives, Lib Dems and across the Labour perspective. We do not deal outside the limits of credibility. But facing real issues makes it so much harder to get coverage.

But I’ll trade fewer press reports for credibility any day, and there is no one of any credibility in government or opposition in our parliament who takes the TPA seriously. Thankfully.

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This entry (permalink) was posted on Monday, March 17, 2008, at 11:48 am by Tax Research LLP. Filed in Economics, Tax Justice Network.
7 Comments
Mark Lee wrote:

I’m entirely with you on this Richard. I don’t know the TPA (other than through their press coverage) but suspect that their agenda is not dissimilar to one or two other frequent commentators in the mainstream press.

When I was Chairman of the ICAEW’s Tax Faculty I got my fair share of coverage but it was nothing as compared with the tax spokesman for another accountancy body. One fundamental difference then (and now) is that he has apparent freedom to create quotes and to take positions that do not require anyone else’s prior approval. A key part of his job is to get his name in the press as often as possible. ICAEW members complain that ICAEW reps are not as visible. The process is more complex and those who might be the face of tax for ICAEW are heavily involved in other activities, considering con docs, collating views, preparing responses and taking part in face to face discussions with HMRC, the Treasury and MPs. These are considered to be more worthwhile activities than getting quotes in the press every day.

I can tell from your piece above that the distinction between TPA and TJN is partly due to a similar choice being made as regards how to spend time and effort.

Mark
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 9:11 pm | Permalink
Devil's Kitchen wrote:

If you think that you have any credibility, Richard, you are seriously mistaken. Someone who is unable to discern the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is not going to be taken seriously by anyone with two brain cells to rub together.

The reason that the government will listen to you is because you tell them want they want to hear, i.e. that they should rake in much more tax so that they may waste it on yet more pointless, expensive and downright damaging schemes.

DK

P.S. Your conflation of Neo-Con and Libertarian demonstrates your ignorance of political theory: a fundamental of libertarian thought is the non-aggression rule, which hardly sits with the expansionist Neo-Con agenda.
Posted on 19-Mar-08 at 5:33 pm | Permalink
Tax Research LLP wrote:

DK

But how wrong you are! The far right are the far right - and if they wish to argue with each others defintions of ‘rightness’, so be it. The world will still ignore them.

But in the real world the fact that there is no clear distinction between tax evasion and avoidance does matter. And it’s this ability to see beyond the pointless argument on definition to the reality of life as it actually is that makes all the difference.

Richard

PS Please don’t bother to reply - as you know, I find your style so offensive I won’t be repeating this unusual exception of allowing you on here for a change
Posted on 19-Mar-08 at 5:47 pm | Permalink
gareth Lane wrote:

There seems very little of substance behind the TPA. I believe the problem lies with the nature of soundbite reporting and the misleading name of this right wing lobby group. The main aim of the TPA, it appears, is to promote lower taxes, to the average news viewer the TPA come across as crusaders against unjust taxation and fat cat politicians. The coverage the TPA receives reflects the need by the media for provocative and easily digested McNews. Human nature always tends towards self righteous indignation before reason. The TPA is a propaganda machine rather than a lobby group I believe it’s agenda is to create a political ambience favourable to right wing policies by using the issue of taxation as a means of crawling into the public psyche.
Posted on 10-Apr-08 at 2:33 pm | Permalink
Rory Meakn wrote:

A few comments:

1. “her £16,000 a year job”… “She simply won’t notice the difference. Her family as a whole will be £88 a year worse off”. Fortunately, I earn more than £16k a year, but sadly I’m not rich enough not to even notice £88. I suspect on her salary, she’s not rich enough, either.

2. “Unlike the TPA, the TJN works in the real world. We talk to real politicians,” Funny - the ‘real world’ is a phrase I’ve only ever previously heard to describe a place where politicians have never known.

3. “But how wrong you are! The far right are the far right”. DK is right here. It may be fair to compare two different groups and conclude neither has mainstream appeal. But to lump together classical liberalism or ‘libertarianism’ with conservative and socialist ideologies of fascism and National Socialism (or ‘nazism’) defeats the purpose of naming and grouping of ideologies. It makes no sense at all to group together conservative, socialist or liberal ideological sub-groups simply because they share minority public appeal. It is like classifying a chiauwawa and a squirrel in the same order simply because they are of a similar size!
Posted on 20-Jul-08 at 5:14 am | Permalink
edward sheridan wrote:

can anyone deny that at least one person in every four in this country is employed in a government tax funded pseudo ”job”. That small businesses are screwed into the ground in order to provide cushy lifestyles for the laziest sections of society and that quangos are totally out of control and that the final salary pensions promised to government employees is impossible to fund without massive levels of tax.
Posted on 29-Sep-08 at 10:49 am | Permalink
Tax Research LLP wrote:

Edward

A fool could say that

Anyone with an ounce of sense could not

What are these pseudo jobs? Nurses, teachers, the police, the forces, health and safety that mean you can buy food and expect to eat it without being ill?

Tell me who the one in 4 are? And don’t say ‘admin’. All services need admin.

Richard
Posted on 29-Sep-08 at 11:59 am | Permalink
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TaxPayers'_Alliance

TaxPayers' Alliance
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The TaxPayers' Alliance is a British pressure group formed in 2004 to campaign for "a low tax society" and claims to have over 18,000 supporters. A grassroots campaign, it also has a strong media presence, claiming to achieve an average of 13 media hits a day.[1]

The Taxpayers' Alliance is a member of the Stockholm Network.

All three founders, and a number of TPA staff members have associations with the Conservative Party and still have strong links with the right wing Freedom Association[2][3][4]

The Alliance claim their mission is:[5]
To reverse the perception that big government is necessary and irreversible.
To explain the benefits of a low tax economy.
To give taxpayers a voice in the corridors of power.
To oppose EU tax harmonisation.Contents [hide]
1 Prominent supporters
2 Campaigns, issues and publications
2.1 Bumper Book of Government Waste
2.2 Council Spending Uncovered
2.3 Google Government
2.4 MPs' Expenses
3 Awards
4 References
5 External links


[edit]
Prominent supporters

In November 2004 and December 2005, the Alliance sent letters to the Financial Times and The Daily Telegraph in opposition to high taxation.[6] The signatories included Adam Afriyie, Tim Congdon, Howard Flight, Ruth Lea, Patrick Minford, Kenneth Minogue, Andrew Roberts, Lord Salisbury and Roger Scruton.

[edit]
Campaigns, issues and publications

[edit]
Bumper Book of Government Waste

Since 2005 the Alliance publishes an annual book, The Bumper Book of Government Waste, detailing "waste" in government departments, local government, devolved government, The Royal Family and the European Union. [7]

[edit]
Council Spending Uncovered

The Council Spending Uncovered Campaign uses accounts from every local authority in the United Kingdom, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, in order to "review spending by local authorities in all corners of the UK and identify a number of budgets that could and should be reduced....[the campaign] enables taxpayers to judge for themselves whether their money is well spent." [8] The Alliance argues that "By trimming the fat from their budgets, councils can reduce the burden on hard-pressed families and pensioners without cutting important services." [9]

So far the campaign claims to have uncovered:
£450 million of spending on local government publicity.[10]
a nine-fold increase in the number of local government staff earning £50,000 or more[11]
that the "outdated" Local Government Pension Scheme costs £4.6 billion in employer contributions each year, equivalent to £1 in every £5 of council tax[12]

[edit]
Google Government

The TPA is a leading proponent of "Google government", arguing that taxpayers have a right to scrutinise how their money is being spent, and citing the success of similar initiatives abroad, e.g. USAspending.gov, which was established by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 in the USA. To that end, TPA publishes large amounts of information on public spending on its website, including the council by council data of the Council Spending Uncovered research series and the What's My Car Tax? database which allows people to find out how the 2008 Budget will affect their car tax.[13]

[edit]
MPs' Expenses

The Alliance has been at the forefront of recent calls for more accountability and transparency in Parliament. In the aftermath of the Derek Conway scandal, TPA has called publicly for greatly increased transparency, improved scrutiny of expenses and the abolition of some expenses such as the allowance for MPs' second homes.[14] The Alliance has also written to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to request an investigation into the expenses of Michael Martin MP Speaker of the House of Commons. [15]

[edit]
Awards

In 2007 the TaxPayers' Alliance won the Innovation Award at the Stockholm Network's "Golden Umbrellas" think tank awards. [16]

[edit]
References
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/history.php
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/2007/08/florence-heath.html
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/2007/08/matthew-elliott.html
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/2007/08/andrew-allum-fo.html
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/mission.php
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/about/business_supporters.php
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/waste/2007/10/the-bumper-book.html
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_3_pension_contributions.pdf
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_3_pension_contributions.pdf
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_1_publicity.pdf
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_2_middle_management_pay.pdf
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/home/files/council_spending_uncovered_3_pension_contributions.pdf
^ http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/whatsmycartax/
^ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=512742&in_page_id=1770
^ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3428007.ece
^ http://www.stockholm-network.org/downloads/press/GUWinners.pdf