Crash Bang Wallace
Libertarian political blog from Mark Wallace; political opinion, breaking news and exclusivesCharity Commission exposes the Guardian’s TPA lies
Posted on February 22, 2011The Guardian is always in the vanguard when it comes to alleging that the TaxPayers’ Alliance or anyone else criticising Government waste are guilty of inaccurate claims. It seems only fair, then, to draw attention to an official finding – not an allegation, mark you – that the Guardian itself has been making up stories about the TPA.
In December 2009 the Guardian ran a front page story by Robert Booth alleging that the TPA was in breach of charity law for accepting donations from a registered charity, the Politics and Economics Research Trust. John Prescott promptly got in on the act, filing a formal complaint.
Nine days later the same paper gleefully reported (again in a story by Robert Booth) that the relationship was being “investigated by regulators”, namely the Charity Commission. The smear implication was clear – and the headline may as well have been “hooray, we don’t like them and an investigation confirms their guilt”.
Strangely, there’s no report in the Guardian today about the findings of the Charity Commission’s investigation, which was published yesterday. Nor, despite his promise that “I’ll let you know when I get a reply”, has Prezza published it or even made reference to the report’s existence.
It’s not really so strange, actually, because the Charity Commission’s findings don’t make happy reading for either the Guardian, Robert Booth or John Prescott. In short, the PERT and the TPA were cleared entirely of the allegations.
But there’s even more to it than that – it turns out that at best the story was written on the back of a fag packet, and at worst it was deliberately misleading the public in order to discredit the TPA.
When the Commission investigated the claims, they found that the PERT was in fact obeying the law – as it said at the time. More remarkable than that, they found a number of massive holes in Booth’s original article:
Booth claimed that the Midlands Industrial Council had donated to the TPA through PERT. The Charity Commission found that in fact the MIC had not done so.
Booth claimed that the MIC was able to claim gift aid on donations to a charity. The Charity Commission found that the MIC is an unincorporated association, does not pay tax on its income from donations by members and thus neither it or its members would have been able to claim gift aid.
Booth quoted David Wall, secretary of the MIC. The Charity Commission spoke to him and reports him as saying that “the comments attributed to him in the newspaper article were misleading”.
Most damning of all, when the Charity Commission asked Booth for “any additional information” on his story or the issue, he “had no further information to provide” – i.e., when he was given a free run to prove his story, produce his evidence and stack up his claims, he literally had nothing to offer.
So in short, the outfit Booth that claimed had donated hadn’t, the tax relief he claimed they would have got if they had donated wouldn’t have been claimable and he was unable to produce any evidence to back up his false claims. How’s that for accuracy?
At the moment, the original Guardian stories are still online, and they have published no retraction or apology. The smear is still common currency among the TPA’s detractors, despite the fact that it has been comprehensively proven to be untrue.
When will we see the Guardian run a front page story headlined “Guardian allegations against TPA ‘totally unfounded’, says official report”?
Saving in ISAs and taking the bus – crimes according to Clegg
Posted on September 22, 2010There are very few people out there in politics who genuinely mix up tax avoidance and tax evasion. Among the lay population the two can easily be confused for obvious reasons, but it’s long been a hobby of high taxers to deliberately elide the two in order to mislead the public. Sadly, Nick Clegg has repeated that sin in his speech to Lib Dem conference.
Tax evasion is a crime – and it should be punished. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, is simply a smear term for perfectly legal, indeed desirable measures taken to not pay any more tax than you have to. It’s not wrong – it is by definition obeying the law.
If Nick Clegg or anyone else doesn’t like the levels of tax that people lawfully pay, then he should use democratic routes to change the legal rates. Smearing the law-abiding to imply they are criminals simply isn’t on. If they actually go down the proposed route of inspectors and lie-detectors to pick up on legal tax minimising, what will they do when they find it? They have no power to punish people who haven’t broken any laws or rules.
To properly illustrate the kind of behaviour Nick Clegg is talking about when he criticises tax avoidance, I thought it would be handy to start a list:
Saving money in ISAs - the ISA is specifically set up to help people avoid paying tax on their savings. If tax avoidance is wrong, then surely the Government will be slamming itself for aiding and abetting the sin by introducing such a shameless avoidance vehicle?
Giving money to charity – in order to encourage people to support worthy causes, there are a variety of tax-exemptions and reductions available on money given to charity. Will Nick Clegg be taxing charitable donations, or discouraging people from giving?
Taking public transport and buying greener cars – Successive Governments have ramped up fuel duty in order to discourage people from driving gas guzzlers or indeed from driving at all. The clear intention of the policy is to encourage people to avoid this tax by either using public transport or buying greener cars. Indeed, the Lib Dems have been key proponents of both forms of tax avoidance.
What other forms of evil tax avoidance is Nick Clegg planning to clamp down on? Suggestions on a postcard.
Charities reap the whirlwind
Posted on July 17, 2010The National Council for Voluntary Organisations are up in arms today at the prospect of charities facing cuts in the amount of taxpayers’ money they receive.
Did they seriously not see this coming? Even if all of these charities were blinkered enough to believe that public spending would never have to fall, they broke fundamental rules of good sense by becoming so reliant on the state in the first place.
Apparently, the taxpayer is now the source of a staggering 1 in 3 pounds going to charities.
That raises serious concerns about the co-opting of charities by the state - like when the NSPCC, which receives EU money, decided to back the Lisbon Treaty, for example.
Worse, this reliance on Government has poisoned the whole mindset of many charities. There’s no doubt that they are faced by a crisis, but what is the NCVA doing with today’s media exposure?
They’re complaining about the inevitable spending cuts, rather than trying to make things better by appealing for donations. As well as selling their independence, they have abandoned their initiative.
It’s time charities returned to being charities, rather than being just another arm of the state.