Our Chief Executive, Jonathan Isaby, has a letter published in The Times this morning. You can find it reproduced in full below. Sir, It may now be deemed an old-fashioned view, but the private details of individuals’ annual income and related tax affairs really ought to remain just that: private... Read more...
Yesterday, Julia Mulligan, the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire Police, tweeted criticising a report from last year which looked at the costs of Police and Crime Commissioners compared to the preceding Police Authorities. In addition, she stated that she had “met [the] researcher who did it and he... Read more...
We at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have long been critics of the Government’s green subsidies. Our position has always been the same: green energy subsidies push up the cost of already stretched families’ domestic energy bills. The cost of inefficient taxpayer-subsidised green programmes always ends up, one way or another, being... Read more...
Junior doctors have commenced their fourth strike over the new contract. The minutiae of this contract have been discussed and are not worth revisiting in detail here, but the latest argument from the British Medical Association – that the contract discriminates against female doctors- is worth examining. The argument is... Read more...
The leak of millions of documents from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca has reignited a debate over “tax havens”. Much of the coverage thus far has centred on the financial affairs of disreputable world leaders who would have great difficulty explaining why such vast assets are being held in... Read more...
They say that only two things are certain: death and taxes, and perhaps the most painful moment for a family is when the two are sadly combined. The death tax runs contrary to the natural human desire to provide a better life for the next generation and is a blatant... Read more...
There are a number of groups and organisations in Wales opposed to the introduction of tax devolution. True Wales has actively campaigned against the entire idea of devolution of power from Whitehall to Cardiff Bay and has gained popular support for their work. Many organisations in their position offer valid... Read more...
With April comes another hike in council tax. The Telegraph reports that bills are set to rise an average of 3.6% outside London - that’s an extra £58 for a Band D property and very close to the maximum 3.9% allowed increase. Reductions in central government funding means that this... Read more...
With so much of government spending ring-fenced there are, inevitably, fewer ways to make the necessary savings in order to balance the nation’s books. One particular area of the budget that the TaxPayers’ Alliance has repeatedly called to come under scrutiny is the spending of 0.7 per cent of gross national... Read more...
Sugary soft drinks will be taxed in an almost certainly futile bid to improve the nation’s health, that much we know. But what other effects will the measure have? The first year that the levy comes into effect the treasury expects to raise about £520 million. Clearly there is not... Read more...
Anyone with even the faintest interest in current affairs could not have failed to notice the surprise resignation of Iain Duncan Smith on Friday evening. In his letter to the Prime Minister, IDS explained that he struggled to accept cuts to disability benefit at the same time that better-off pensioners... Read more...
As a Unionist I am regularly asked why I support the idea of the Welsh Government having Tax Raising powers. To some it could appear to be a step towards the eventual breakup of the United Kingdom by a nationalist undercurrent, an attempt to get the wheels in motion for... Read more...
The story of Welsh devolution has been a rocky one and this year is possible one of the most important years for Welsh Taxpayers and the electorate as a whole. We, like other devolved nations have our regional governmental elections on a number of weeks before the EU referendum. With... Read more...
The overwhelmingly dominant challenge that faced the coalition government was getting spending under control. A weak, sluggish economy could not withstand higher tax and fears that jittery markets would lose confidence in the UK treasury's ability to stay on top of its debt were real. So reversing the extraordinary spending... Read more...
An interesting story grabbed our attention this morning, namely that MEPs have been spending millions of taxpayer pounds on “study trips” to Brussels and Strasbourg for their party activists. These trips, which are eligible for generous EU subsidies, feature in a rather harrowing recent review of the European Parliament’s £1.3... Read more...
Last week our team went to Bournemouth for a day of campaigning and meeting local supporters. We started outside of the Town Hall where we were greeted by the Bournemouth Echo who interviewed our Chief Executive, Jonathan Isaby. Moving on to the town square, we handed out leaflets about council... Read more...
In the summer budget last year, George Osborne asked the Office for Tax Simplification to study the possible alignment of national insurance with income tax. On Monday last week they published their report, recommending that the Chancellor shifts employee national insurance contributions to make it much more like income tax:... Read more...
We at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have been vocal in the last few weeks about the importance of taxpayers’ cash not being used to bolster either side in the forthcoming EU referendum campaign. With established campaign groups funded by private donations forming to make the respective cases for Leave and Remain,... Read more...
The running sore that is the e-Borders programme is continuing to cause trouble and is starting to look at a classic of the poorly thought through government IT procurement project genre. At current projections, alongside its successor programme, it will cost over a billion pounds, be delivered 8 years late,... Read more...
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is now accepting initial offers from those interested in buying the Green Investment Bank (GIB) - a step that is very encouraging for taxpayers. The TPA have been advocating scraping or selling off GIB for a long time now, it even featured... Read more...
In July 2015, the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information was asked to look into the operation of the Freedom of Information Act, ostensibly to determine whether it struck the right balance between openness and accountability and a “safe space” for policy development. Many transparency campaigners feared that the act... Read more...
Yesterday the Scottish Government started debating whether it should use its new powers to increase the welfare bill. We think this would be a grave error. It may force Ministers to divert money away from other programmes and make it very difficult for them to live within their means. Identifiable... Read more...
Today The Sun wrote up a little bit of research undertaken by the TPA on social media spending by central government. Our research found that advertising on social media can be very expensive, in fact almost £2 million was spent on promoted Twitter and Facebook posts in a three year... Read more...
Junior doctors are going on strike again. The three planned walkouts are even more futile than the previous two now that the government has decided to impose the contract. The Health Secretary has made his decision and that is how the NHS works: the big decisions are made by elected... Read more...