Buried in today's half-year results from commodities giant Glencore is confirmation of a scoop that @taxwatch.bsky.social and The Observer published in May 🧵
TaxWatch
@taxwatch.bsky.social
TaxWatch is an investigative think tank which aims to broaden public participation in the debate on tax through research on the #tax system.
Day 3, and the new PM is already looking to vape shops and 'tackling tax evasion' to fund new expenditure. In this case, business rates cuts for pubs and clubs. 🧮Do the numbers add up? /1 www.gov.uk/government/n...
Burnham means business: PM slashes business rates bills for pubs, clubs and live music venues
Continuing his drive to build an economy that works for every postcode, the Prime Minister has taken action to cut business rates bills for pubs, social clubs and live music venues across England from...
gov.uk
🎉Tax-free overtime🎉 Sounds attractive: rewarding the strivers and the toilers. But in real life, a potential recipe for manipulation, reams of resulting anti-avoidance legislation, and significant unfairness. www.linkedin.com/posts/tax-fr...
Tax-free overtime. 🎉 Sounds attractive: rewarding the strivers and the toilers. But in real life, likely a recipe for manipulation, reams of resulting anti-avoidance legislation, and significant… | ...
Tax-free overtime. 🎉 Sounds attractive: rewarding the strivers and the toilers. But in real life, likely a recipe for manipulation, reams of resulting anti-avoidance legislation, and significant unf...
linkedin.com
If you believe some UK papers today, the Chancellor is going to pay for cost-of-living help through a "tax raid" on oil & gas companies' offshore shenanigans. Few have got into the detail. The reality - both about the shenanigans, and the tax raid - is somewhat different...🧵
UK News 🇬🇧@news-flows-uk.bsky.social · 4mo agoReeves targets oil and gas profits with plans to close tax loophole The Chancellor hopes reforms to taxation of overseas activities will bring in ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’. © PA Media
Make taxes mandatory again. The full Glencore story from @taxwatch.bsky.social: www.taxwatchuk.org/private-just... Link to join our mailing list: taxjustice.uk/join-the-tax...
Different regulatory risks can pool in the same place. As @spotlightcorruption.org points out, a UK subsidiary battling a £1 bn+ 'diverted profits' tax bill for £mm Swiss payments (no suggestion unlawful) also pled guilty to paying £m bribes. Both raise questions for the company's auditors.
Spotlight on Corruption@spotlightcorruption.org · 4mo ago1. 🌟 Brilliant new report out from our friends at @taxwatch.bsky.social exposing how profit-shifting by oil trading giant Glencore Energy UK Ltd has blown up into a £1.5 billion tax dispute with HMRC that has dragged on for 15 years. 🧵 www.taxwatchuk.org/private-just...
While fuel bills go up, the £1.5bn tax bill of one of the world’s biggest oil traders – eyeing bumper profits from war in the Gulf – is still unsettled. Why? Because the UK wants to handle big companies' tax avoidance claims in secret foreign negotiations rather than UK courts🧵
Though we focus on the UK, Glencore's tax affairs raise lots of other important questions in Australia, Colombia... cictar.org/all-research...
Broke: Coal Mining Giant Games Global Tax System — Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research
We contacted Glencore to respond to our allegations. You can read their response here.
cictar.org
@cictar.bsky.social · 4mo agoGreat work from our comrades at Taxwatch UK Revealing how power works and the role of Switzerland in the global commodity trading and tax dodging system. See also, CICTAR's work on Starbucks and Glencore!
Our new investigation in today's @theobserveruk.bsky.social More here: taxwatchuk.org/private-just... #tax #oil #energy #markets #iranwar
Private justice, public loss
While consumers' fuel bills go up, a £1.5 billion tax bill levied on one of the world’s biggest oil traders remains unsettled. This week it announced bumper trading profits amidst the global oil suppl...
taxwatchuk.org
The Observer@theobserveruk.bsky.social · 4mo agoHMRC could lose £1.5bn Glencore tax dispute in secret ‘all or nothing’ process Barney Macintyre reports that fifteen years after launching the long-running case, the taxman stands to lose the lot if a panel of foreign arbitrators rules in favour of the commodities giant https://bit.ly/4uKhFOb
Taxing in the dark: @transparencyuk.bsky.social highlights the challenge of overstretched local authorities enforcing the new 'Mansion Tax' when 23% of offshore companies owning UK properties have failed to declare their beneficial owner www.transparency.org.uk/news/uks-new...
The UK’s new ‘mansion tax’: taxing in the dark?
transparency.org.uk
"Aggressive tax avoidance & tax evasion have become decriminalised, not through any change in the law but through something far more corrosive: lack of enforcement" Finance Bill 25-26 has new powers against tax schemers. But existing ones aren't being used, says @philbrickellmp.bsky.social
So you’d think their businesses would be last in line for UK tax breaks. You’d be wrong. @taxwatch.bsky.social exposed in the recent Spring Statement the UK gov quietly admitted that their global tax deal will let US multinationals off £700m a year until 2029. 👇 4/7 bsky.app/profile/taxw...
TaxWatch@taxwatch.bsky.social · 6mo agoOne major story slipped out with today's OBR Forecast, and without any public comment: 🌎A global tax carve-out for US multinationals, pushed by the UK and G7 to appease the US, is expected to let corporate giants off over £2bn of tax by 2028/29. That's £700m a year 🧵/1
One major story slipped out with today's OBR Forecast, and without any public comment: 🌎A global tax carve-out for US multinationals, pushed by the UK and G7 to appease the US, is expected to let corporate giants off over £2bn of tax by 2028/29. That's £700m a year 🧵/1
We're told the days of large corporates buying off-the-peg tax schemes or shifting profits to tax havens are over. Are big business now 😇tax saints or still 👿tax sinners? taxwatchuk.org/big-corporat... 🧵
The UK government has quietly shelved a programme to build a frictionless post-Brexit trade border, after spending £110mn on a contract with Deloitte and IBM for the project, drawing criticism from trade and tax experts. ft.trib.al/pV6w1i1
£111M later, frictionless post-Brexit border dream 'brought to early closure'
£111M later, frictionless post-Brexit border dream 'brought to early closure'
With no staff, no funding, and the contract closed, it looks a lot like limbo The UK's long-promised "Single Trade Window" has quietly run out of steam after burning through more than £111 million ($150 million), with officials confirming the program has been "brought to early closure."…
dlvr.it
This @financialtimes.com story comes from our latest State of Tax Administration report: an annual deep dive into how well the UK collects tax, and how the administration tasked with doing it is doing. Why do we think that's important? 🧵https://www.ft.com/content/186f4975-40fc-471f-86bb-fe2b7607793d
UK quietly shelves £110mn frictionless post-Brexit trade border project
Experts criticise halt to programme that had used Deloitte and IBM as contractors
ft.com
Are small businesses tax dodgers or tax victims? The Business & Trade Cttee's latest report says tax compliance is crushing small businesses. Yet headlines last year claimed HMRC had 'lost control' of small businesses, failing to collect 40% of small business Corporation Tax. Can both be true? 🧵
New, with @fairness.bsky.social : HMRC surveys suggest tax avoidance & evasion may be becoming more acceptable among the youngest cohort of UK taxpayers, esp men 16-34. Changes are small so far, but we need to start asking if it's real, and why it's happening
Fairness Foundation@fairness.bsky.social · 7mo agoAre young people losing faith in the tax system? A joint post with Mike Lewis at @taxwatch.bsky.social about some concerning HMRC survey data
thetimes.com/money/tax/article/uk-100-biggest-taxpayers-2026-tax-list-nqsjk2bvn? Today @thetimes.com publishes their annual Tax List: a list of the 'unsung heroes' who are the UK's 100 biggest taxpayers. Or are they? Our response 🧵
Who are the UK’s biggest taxpayers? The 2026 Tax List revealed
Betfred’s record-breaking brothers lead a top 100 who have given a combined £5.7bn, from JK Rowling to Harry Styles and Anthony Joshua
thetimes.com
This week @houseofcommons.parliament.uk MPs asked HMRC bosses why they won't publish figures on the scale of offshore tax evasion. @taxwatch.bsky.social revealed last year the existence of these internal estimates, larger than published figures. Here's what we learned at the hearing:🧵
TaxWatch's Jack McConnel in today's @financialtimes.com on the white-knuckle run-up to Making Tax Digital (MTD), "the biggest change in a generation for how nearly 3 million people will do their taxes”. www.ft.com/content/3ba1...
The US has won its war on minimum taxes for profit-shifting MNCs, backed by the G7 - including the UK. How much revenue will the UK lose? @hmtreasury refuses to release its estimate. We estimate countries may forego ~$40bn annually (~$6bn from just 6 US tech giants) taxwatchuk.org/a-blank-cheq...
A blank cheque?
Governments refuse to release estimates of the revenue foregone from the G7's 2025 deal to exempt US-headed corporate groups from international minimum taxes. Using OECD and US government data, TaxWat...
taxwatchuk.org
How is HMRC's Digital Transformation really going? 🤜It's needed. Tax evasion is moving online. It's time tax administration did too. But: ⚙️ Some MTD APIs still aren't ready 💷 Costs are up, expected returns down 5 things we learned in 2025: www.taxwatchuk.org/make-tax-dig...
Making tax digital? Five things we’ve learned about HMRC’s Digital...
HMRC has promised that from 2026 it will transform the way it uses digital tools to tackle tax evasion and interface with taxpayers. With the clock ticking, here are five things we found out this year...
taxwatchuk.org
Why don't people trust HMRC? The answers not what you might think - there's more going on than just the fact that people don't like paying tax... TaxWatch deep-dive here: taxinvestigation.co/new/why-dont...
Why don’t people trust HMRC? | HMRC: Tax Investigations
taxinvestigation.co
Resourcing HMRC is incredibly good value: every £1 for tax compliance brings in £23. Private-sector orgs dream about ROI like that. But some everyday/automated tax enforcement is error-prone, or hits the poorest hardest. We need to measure tax **enforcement** incidence.
Fairness Foundation@fairness.bsky.social · 9mo agoWe need HMRC to work better for ordinary taxpayers: both fairness and our public finances depend on it. A guest post by Mike Lewis, Director of @taxwatch.bsky.social www.faircomment.co.uk/p/we-need-hm...
👏 Thank you to everyone who took action and emailed your MPs to say NO to new tax breaks for big tech.👇
TaxWatch@taxwatch.bsky.social · 9mo ago🌐Also hidden in today's Budget: the UK is keeping its Digital Services Tax, despite Trump tariff threats. This will safeguard £4.4-5.2bn of tax revenues from the biggest tech companies over this parliament. Read TaxWatch’s DST myth-buster here: taxwatchuk.org/new-taxwatch... #budget25 #budget #tax
🌐Also hidden in today's Budget: the UK is keeping its Digital Services Tax, despite Trump tariff threats. This will safeguard £4.4-5.2bn of tax revenues from the biggest tech companies over this parliament. Read TaxWatch’s DST myth-buster here: taxwatchuk.org/new-taxwatch... #budget25 #budget #tax
New TaxWatch briefing tackles three myths about the Digital...
As the US President prepares to fly into the UK with tech bosses in tow, a new briefing from TaxWatch shows that the US government and tech industry representatives have made strongly inaccurate claim...
taxwatchuk.org
TaxWatch's flash Budget response: A new £2.6bn tax dodging crackdown is the Budget’s third-largest tax pledge. But will it work, when existing tools are barely being used? taxwatchuk.org/new-2-6bn-ta... #budget25 #budget #tax
“New £2.6bn tax dodging crackdown can’t work if existing tools are...
The Budget’s third-largest tax pledge relies on a UK tax authority that is suffering from recruitment delays and unfinished IT systems. Just 26 of 6,700 extra compliance/debt staff promised by Chancel...
taxwatchuk.org
The government’s flagship plan to “close the tax gap” cannot work without the staff required to deliver it. taxwatchuk.org/state-of-tax... New report, and 🧵
State of Tax Administration 2025
The fourth of TaxWatch’s annual data deep-dives into the administration of the UK tax system, covering the 2024-25 tax year. Using published data and extensive figures obtained via Freedom of Informat...
taxwatchuk.org