Still think UKuncut is having no difference?

Here’s more proof that HMRC’s accountants are waking up to what is called the ‘tax gap. An event at the House of Commons next month will discuss this issue.

Held by the Association of Revenue and Customs (ARC), the meeting is titled ‘Tackling the Tax Gap: Defeating the Deficit’.

It aims to “promote a high level debate about how to close the tax gap”.

They say:

There are three main ways the UK can reduce our Budget deficit, and there has been huge amount of focus on two of them, cutting public spending, and supporting the economy to grow, but very little focus on the third, making sure the we are collecting all the tax owed to us. With uncollected taxes estimated to be between £40 and £50 billion per year, there needs to be an urgent focus on how to ensure that taxes are collected efficiently and fairly to support the deficit reduction strategy.

High profile panel members will discuss how the deficit could be reduced through strategies and investment in HMRC and its workforce. We are hopeful that Minister David Gauke will speak and we are delighted that Caroline Lucas MP, David Hanson MP, and Chas Roy Chowdhury, Head of Taxation at ACCA have also agreed to contribute to the discussion.

ARC is part of the FDA, representing senior tax professionals and managers who work in HMRC.

These are the senior tax inspectors, accountants, lawyers, policy makers and managers who implement the Government’s policies, draft tax laws and administer the tax system fairly. ARC members are highly skilled and trained, bringing in the money to fund vital public services for the benefit of everyone living in the UK.

As far as I can tell this event, on 16th March, is invite only, but will ask if anyone can register.
Contact if you’re interested.

Update: USuncut get featured on the US cable network MSNBC

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Last week Eric Pickles paid tribute to Conservative councils for being open and allowing access to ‘citizen journalists’ at local meetings. He said he wanted all councils to follow suit.

He wrote:

Conservative-run Windsor and Maidenhead recently decided to allow members of the public to video local meetings. This week, I wrote to councils encouraging them to follow suit, opening up public discussions to all forms of multimedia. Citizen journalists have as much right as anyone to attend and to share their views, and council ‘monitoring officers’ shouldn’t hide behind bogus concerns about ‘data protection’ or ‘human rights’

Did he bother speaking to his favourite London council of Barnet?

Apparently not.

Journalist David Hencke points out that Barnet councillors have told their local media that they plan to do nothing of the sort that Pickles suggested.

Lynne Hillan, leader of the council, told the Barnet Times:

The only thing we will do is consider responsible media requests, and they are the only thing we would allow at this stage. If we had a request I would expect an officer to approach me about it. I do not think we would consider a request from bloggers. Only respectable media would be considered.

Hear that Tim Montgomerie? Just because you run the top Tory blog in the country doesn’t make you respectable, according to your own chums.

Oh dear.

David Hencke adds:

This dinosaur attitude from a Queen Canute is breathtaking. Her ignorance about how the modern world works is absurd. Presumably her next step as Barnet leader will be to table a motion condemning Lady Thatcher for allowing the public by law to attend council meetings.

As Eric Pickles would say…

When councils make these sorts of petty decisions, at best they look foolish and out of touch; at worst they look like they have something to hide.

So what have you got to hide Ms Hillian?

London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson in the Telegraph column today:

Remember Blair’s massive victory of 1997, when he got 419 seats with 43 per cent of the vote? Under the AV system he would have got 445 seats, and the Tories (who won 30 per cent of the vote) would have been reduced to 70 seats instead of 165. Indeed, if AV had been in force at the last election, the Tories would have got 281 rather than 306 seats – and Labour would have been up four, on 258. And that, of course, is why Gordon Brown announced his panic-stricken death-bed conversion – in the deluded hope of changing the odds and gerrymandering the system.

Nick Clegg himself was right to oppose AV before the election, and he should stick to his guns. First-past-the-post has served this country well, and served dozens of other countries well. We would be mad to go to a great deal of trouble and expense to adopt a system that is less fair than the one we have.

He is preaching to the converted of course, as Conservative voters are resolutely against AV.

But inadvertently he is helping to convince Labour supporters that AV will benefit their party – which is really useful since its Labour that is split over electoral reform not the Conservatives.

His analysis is flawed of course – trying to speculate how a previous election would have turned out if the electoral system was different is futile. It doesn’t take into account tactical voting at that time given FPTP’s own bias.

But thanks Boris!

Labour launched an all-out assault on Conservatives this weekend over the falling living standards for middle income earners.

What’s interesting is partly that rather than focusing on how the budget deficit would be reduced, where Labour still have a problem with their narrative, it focuses on how the government’s actions are ‘squeezing the middle’.

Curious too, that News International continue to lead on this attack, offering considerable space to Ed Balls.

In an interview with the Sunday Times yesterday, Ed Balls warned of Britain’s “cost of living crisis,” and demanded that George Osborne reverse the VAT increase.

Filling up a family car now costs £65-£75. World oil prices are already very high, and the chancellor has chosen, at this very moment, to raise fuel prices further, by pushing up Vat. I am urging him to reverse that increase.
…
Osborne will say that he can’t make these sorts of decisions outside the Budget, but he recently announced a new bank tax at 7.22am on the [BBC Radio 4 ]Today programme. If he can have a mini-budget for banks, he can have a mini-budget for motorists.

On the Politics Show at lunchtime yesterday, Ed Balls said the same thing:

I think he should say now to families who are having a tough time across the country ‘actually the VAT rise on fuel was a mistake’. I think he should do it before the Budget, he should say I will reverse that now. He can think about duty when he gets to the Budget. As you know when we were in government we often didn’t put the duty rise through if the oil price was high. That’s a budget decision but he could reverse the VAT thing now and give relief to families and hauliers all around the country. I think it would be a really good way to show he was in touch and to get out of his bunker.

And today Ed Balls is in the Sun newspaper pretty much saying the same thing. Repetition is key.

Ed Miliband is also on the attack, but with a slightly different pitch focusing on living standards in general rather than just on the fuel VAT rise.

He has been “love-bombing” middle-income earners today, says Sky News.

He was on BBC Breakfast this morning, and a speech later today to the Resolution Foundation later today will be more nuanced – focusing on lower and middle income earners.

He will say:

There is now a very real risk that we will see the longer-term pressure on wages for those on middle and low incomes colliding with rising prices, tax and benefit changes introduced by this Tory-led government and public service cuts which all hit families with children the hardest.

My fear for those on middle and low incomes is that more and more families will face a cost of living crisis that will see them left behind, even as the economy eventually recovers.

The failure of the government is two-fold: they are not taking steps to build a different kind of economy, and they are hitting lower and middle-income families hardest in the way they are cutting the deficit.

Looks like Ed Miliband will take a more proactive role in criticising the government from now.