Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

How is that worse? Sounds like a legal way to get around tax.

Time well tell what happened with Rayner, but at worst it was a pretty minor one off tax dodge. More likely IMO there was some element of ignorance in there and not realising she had made a mistake- either that or she is a serious idiot to trash her career over such a small (for people in her position) amount.

With Farage he has a very purposeful setup to avoid paying taxes on an industrial scale. No debate of whether he realised what he was doing or not. He very definitely does.

[garbon]

Feels like running stories on Nadine Dorries going to Reform are just serving to assist Reform. Who cares about that irrelevant dumpster fire?

Further reflection, Nadine is just so eager for attention, she is willing to be used.

Quick google gave me this that Nigel said previously about Nadine:

Nigel Farage MP
@Nigel_Farage
I had the misfortune of watching and listening to Nadine Dorries this morning. If she is the PM's defence then he really is a goner.
2:05 PM · Feb 5, 2022

[garbon]

How is that worse? Sounds like a legal way to get around tax.

Time well tell what happened with Rayner, but at worst it was a pretty minor one off tax dodge. More likely IMO there was some element of ignorance in there and not realising she had made a mistake- either that or she is a serious idiot to trash her career over such a small (for people in her position) amount.

With Farage he has a very purposeful setup to avoid paying taxes on an industrial scale. No debate of whether he realised what he was doing or not. He very definitely does.

You have to realise that is a partisan look at it though. Richard said it best on what it objectively looks like.

[PJL]

It does look like Rayner is a goner, given the way the story has been reported. I expect she will resign once the report is out today.

[Sheilbh]

It looks like Rayner may have engaged in tax evasion, she is also a government minister. Farage is just an MP and is doing standard tax avoidance. I don't like him either but there is a huge difference between the two.

Yeah - also she was Labour's attack dog in opposition on scandals, not least over Nadhim Zahawi's tax.

The lawyer who uncovered that had a good summary in the Times:

Did Angela Rayner avoid or evade tax — or make a simple mistake?
We can imagine a scenario where the deputy PM declined to pay tax, or was careless, reckless or badly advised — but the most satisfying answer is usually wrong
Dan Neidle
Thursday September 04 2025, 9.50pm, The Times

When something goes wrong with a politician's taxes, you can be sure of four things. The politician will say it was a mistake, and probably blame their advisers. Their opponents will say it was tax avoidance. Some very angry people on social media will say it was tax evasion, and the politician should be thrown into jail. Other equally angry people will say it's an outrageous travesty, and we should be furious about another politician's taxes instead.

How should we really view this? We know Angela Rayner failed to pay £40,000 of "higher rate" stamp duty when she bought her Hove flat. But did she avoid tax? Evade tax? Or something else?

Tax evasion is a criminal offence. It involves dishonesty, and usually deception. Bernie Ecclestone intentionally failed to tell HMRC about an offshore trust, was convicted of tax evasion and had to pay £650 million in tax, interest and penalties.

We can imagine a scenario where Rayner evaded tax. Say she knew that the stamp-duty rules meant her Hove purchase would be a second property, so she would have to pay the additional £40,000 of stamp duty. But — we could theorise — Rayner dishonestly went ahead and paid the lower rate.

The small problem with this theory is that there's no evidence of dishonesty whatsoever, just as there was no evidence Nadhim Zahawi had dishonestly known that he was failing to pay tax that was due. You may (depending on your political proclivities) suspect that Rayner or Zahawi was dishonest. But even if you're right, HMRC would never be able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. A prosecution for tax evasion is out of the question.

What about tax avoidance?

Tax avoidance is when you try to pay less tax by doing something in a manner parliament doesn't intend. I'm supposed to buy an Isa or a pension — that's not tax avoidance. But (for example) pretending I have a second-hand car trade and claiming £1 million in tax losses is tax avoidance. That's what Chris Moyles and others did; like almost all tax avoidance schemes, it failed.

Again we can imagine a scenario: say that, in an attempt to avoid stamp duty, Rayner contrived a transaction with her child's trust so that, when she came to buy the Hove flat, it would be her only property. But there's no evidence for that at all. And this theory involves her going through a complex and expensive legal process (including obtaining the approval of the court) but never checking if her scheme actually worked. Seems unlikely.

Once we've eliminated tax evasion and tax avoidance, the remaining category is "mistake". There are, however, several types of mistake, with different tax (and perhaps political) consequences.

One type of mistake is where Rayner obtains tax advice from an appropriate adviser, having provided them with all the facts, but the adviser simply gets the law wrong. That's unlikely but possible. In such a case, legally and morally, Rayner is blameless. She still has to pay the tax and interest, but no penalties.

Another possibility is that Rayner was reckless. She assumed the position was fine ("of course I don't own another property"), took no advice, and so paid the wrong tax. In that case she's been "careless", and would probably face penalties of up to 30 per cent of the £40,000.

The final type of mistake — and perhaps the most likely — falls between these two cases. Say Rayner didn't actually receive tax advice. She spoke to her conveyancer (not a tax or trusts expert) and the lawyers advising her on trusts (not tax experts). They perhaps made encouraging noises, but didn't provide formal advice on the point (because they knew they weren't tax advisers). Rayner then makes the mistake of assuming everything is fine and pays the wrong tax.

It's easy to see how a normal person could find themselves in that position; less obvious how a deputy prime minister could (particularly a deputy PM who had a tax scrape on capital gains tax only last year).

Would this be "careless", with penalties of up to 30 per cent? Possibly — that depends on precisely what happened.

None of which will be very satisfying for people who think Rayner is an innocent, unjustly persecuted, or an evil tax evader who deserves jail. But anyone with experience of our tax system knows that the most satisfying answer is usually wrong.

Dan Neidle is a tax lawyer and founder of Tax Policy Associates

I'd add that I think (and hope) there is sympathy to Rayner's complex situation with her son and ex-partners. However I think that is also a bit undermined by the fact that it seems she used money from the trust for her son to pay for her flat in Brighton.

I don't think he engaged in tax evasion. Everything I've seen suggests she was at best very careless - as Neidle pretty extraordinarily so for a politician whose tax status and property have been under scrutiny before. But it looks a bit dodgy and she went in very hard on Tory ministers at the slightest whiff of a scandal.

I'm reminded of Tony Blair's advice when he left office that parties in opposition shouldn't "overdo" scandals because they're boomerangs. There will always be scandals and painting yourself as "whiter than white" is creating a rod for your own back. By all means attack, but don't go overboard. And I'm reminded of Rayner saying Starmer was "Mr Propriety" when it came to rules.

I think the Farage article reminds me of during Partygate when the Daily Mail was desperately scrabbling to find an incident with Starmer they could plausibly argue was breaking lockdown rules.

There two other sides on this which I think are interesting. One is that she's relying a lot - as late era Tories did in office - on reporting herself to the ethics advisor. I don't think people care about the "ethics advisor" (again this was something Labour made a lot of in opposition). I think there's a gap emerging between what our political class think is right or wrong (perhaps particularly under Starmer given his background) which is that it's about compliance with rules like the Ministerial Code, and the general public where it's right or wrong as a judgement. We've seen a few now - like the suits and the Taylor Swift tickets - where there's a strong line by the government that it's fine that people were buying those for the PM because they were declared so it was within the rules.

Other point I'd add is Reeves and Phillipson have both been very tepid in their support for Rayner when asked on their media availabilities. I think that's telling.

Feels like running stories on Nadine Dorries going to Reform are just serving to assist Reform. Who cares about that irrelevant dumpster fire?

It was in the news when relatively minor figures - difficult left-wing backbench MPs - left Labour and also when they re-joined in 2015.

Dorries is, for all her flaws, a former Secretary of State (just as a total aside I've heard from people that her civil servants actually really liked her and thought she was very good at leading a department). I'm not sure this is necessarily good news for Reform though. On the one hand she was a really instrumental Culture Secretary in shepherding through the Online Safety Act - so I think she should be pushed pretty hard on that and Farage's criticism of it. But also I think there's a real danger for Reform if they become the Tories re-branded and that's a line of attack Labour should be exploring.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Neidle uses a different and tighter definition of tax avoidance than the one I have been using. I have been assuming that buying a bottle of whiskey at the airport or making ISA investments are tax avoidance; in plain English they are ways of avoiding tax but it seems that the legal definition involves "what parliament intended". I don't like that because how is someone to know what Parliament intended?

I think a big risk we run is Reform winning the next general election and forming a government with utterly inexperienced ministers who will have no grip over their departments. Then we will get civil service rule and the slow decline will continue...not good.

So I reckon they need some of the experience that the more right wing parts of the Tory party could bring over. At which point the "same old Tories" line will have some force as you say.

[Josquius]

How is that worse? Sounds like a legal way to get around tax.

Time well tell what happened with Rayner, but at worst it was a pretty minor one off tax dodge. More likely IMO there was some element of ignorance in there and not realising she had made a mistake- either that or she is a serious idiot to trash her career over such a small (for people in her position) amount.

With Farage he has a very purposeful setup to avoid paying taxes on an industrial scale. No debate of whether he realised what he was doing or not. He very definitely does.

You have to realise that is a partisan look at it though. Richard said it best on what it objectively looks like.

Not really.
In my book carefully stepping around the law to con the country out of vast sums is far worse than stumbling into not paying a few quid.

Especially if Rayner goes over this, the media really aught to draw more attention to Farage. But they won't.

[Sheilbh]

He's a tax lawyer so no doubt partially responsible for the complexity But he has been showing this slide which I actually think makes it a bit clearer - his assessment is Rayner is in 4:

I think a big risk we run is Reform winning the next general election and forming a government with utterly inexperienced ministers who will have no grip over their departments. Then we will get civil service rule and the slow decline will continue...not good.

Yeah I think that's fair and a risk from that which Farage has flagged himself is what comes after him and after Reform because there's some really dark stuff percolating on the right at the minute.

I think Reform will face huge amount of obstacles from within the civil service if they won office and I don't see any sense of that or what they need to do to fix it. So I think you're right and I think we've already got a government that's in office but not in power, I think the same could go for a few of the later Tory cabinets. It's not a good thing.

I'd add interesting FT piece by a new Labour MP, Josh Simons (I'm not a massive fan), on the new intake feeling pretty radicalised. In particular calls out that "fresh colleagues are told that something cannot be done or is not appropriate" and is hearing them start to snap back "why? Who says? Why not change it to work differently? After all, we politicians are in charge, aren't we?"

Hopefully it leads somewhere - see the similar reports on all of Starmer being increasingly radicalised (by his own appointments) the longer he is in Downing Street and realising how difficult it is to do things.

[Sheilbh]

By the by on the point of comparing malicious communication offences with other common crimes - the Times have dug in a little.

First on the point I made of the arrest rate significantly increasing - but not the charge or conviction rate:


But also the comparison with some other common crimes in 2024 - so last year with stats. Just not sure this is the right priority

[garbon]

Not really.
In my book carefully stepping around the law to con the country out of vast sums is far worse than stumbling into not paying a few quid.

Is it a con to use available tax loop holes or standard practice.

And what you call 'stumbling into not paying a few quid' was described in Sheilbh's article as 'reckless' and 'careless' and wasn't it '£40k' not 'a few quid'?

That said, I think certainly says nothing positive about how we treat northeren, working-class women if this is her epitaph.

Especially if Rayner goes over this, the media really aught to draw more attention to Farage. But they won't.

I'm not sure there is much interest in seeing how people used legal tax manoeuvres.

[garbon]

By the by on the point of comparing malicious communication offences with other common crimes - the Times have dug in a little.

First on the point I made of the arrest rate significantly increasing - but not the charge or conviction rate:

What are the absolute numbers behind this graph? All of that could still be a drop in the bucket compared to other crimes.

[HVC]

It looks like Rayner may have engaged in tax evasion, she is also a government minister. Farage is just an MP and is doing standard tax avoidance. I don't like him either but there is a huge difference between the two.

Difference between evasion and avoidance is a good tax lawyer

[Sheilbh]

What are the absolute numbers behind this graph? All of that could still be a drop in the bucket compared to other crimes.

The absolute figures in comparison with other crimes for 2024 are in the next chart. In 2023 that was 12,000 arrests.

Worth noting just to clarify that this is specifically "malicious communications" offences which is basically the more internet-specific ones. It doesn't cover public order offences which can also be online.

I'm not sure there is much interest in seeing how people used legal tax manoeuvres.

Also Jos, you literally posted a Guardian article trying to kick that off.

It's a little bit like "the MSM won't cover this!" with a link to a BBC article.

[Gups]

From the Times article RH posted:

"The final type of mistake — and perhaps the most likely — falls between these two cases. Say Rayner didn't actually receive tax advice. She spoke to her conveyancer (not a tax or trusts expert) and the lawyers advising her on trusts (not tax experts). They perhaps made encouraging noises, but didn't provide formal advice on the point (because they knew they weren't tax advisers). Rayner then makes the mistake of assuming everything is fine and pays the wrong tax."

Is that right I wonder. I'm not a conveyancer (thank God) but surely knowing the (not very complex) SDLT rules is part of the job. At the very least she should be advised to check.

Incidentally, I know which firm advised her. They are a top 50 UK firm - not a £600 per job high street shop.

[Gups]

Incidentally, I know which firm advised her. They are a top 50 UK firm - not a £600 per job high street shop.

Correction. I had heard it was Shoosmiths but they've just denied it.