Why do we need another Taxpayers’ Alliance when we already have the estimable, non-partisan Institute of Fiscal Studies?

For handy references, try these recently updated IFS reports:

IFS A Survey of Public Spending in the UK
http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn43.pdf

IFS Survey of the UK Tax System
http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf

The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance isn’t actually a taxpayers alliance. It doesn’t campaign for taxpayers at all, devoting its efforts to attacking the proper one. And it doesn’t even want lower taxes. It’s a joke.

Well a substantial amount of Taxpayers themselves don’t want lower taxes, they want improved public services instead.

Quite. The suggestion that you can only represent taxpayers by demanding that taxes are lowered is a false claim – and one that the original TPA is devoted to conning people into believing. That’s is precisely why the Other TPA needs to exist.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance isn’t actually a Taxpayers’ Alliance, Rumbold. It’s actually a pressure group for rich people funded by a number of major donors to the Tory Party. One of its directors, Alexander Heath, doesn’t even pay UK taxes since he has lived abroad since 1973. It’s a joke.

It would be useful if we could have a non-partisan organisation that highlighted government waste. Then the Left could call for it to be spent better and the Right could argue for tax cuts. Obviously there would be some division over what constitutes waste but the differences in opinion should be made clear.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance does have its flaws. It intervenes far too much now (the duck affair springs to mind) and it would benefit from being more transparent, and declaring all donations, over, say, £5000 per person per year. However, it is still the best taxpayers’ pressure group we have. Given the high levels on taxation in this country (people earning minimum wage are taxed, which is ridiculous), any taxpayers’ group not campaigning for lower taxes isn’t worthy of the name. More importantly, it is one of the few groups that really focuses on government waste.

As Richard said, I would love to see a non-partisan group doing this, because then the left could focus on what it actually said rather than attacking it all the time. But for the moment, I will stick with what we have.

There is a non-partisan UK tax thinktank, and it’s called the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Among other things, it’s published some very good stuff on how taxation hits the poor, which is indeed absurd.

But if you think that the chairman of JCB and the funders of the Midlands Industrial Council give money to the Taxpayers’ Alliance to improve the lot of minimum wage earners, I have these title deeds to the Eiffel Tower that I’d like to sell you…

The problem with the Institute for Fiscal Studies is that it uses a lot of big numbers and Daily Mail readers struggle with the word “fiscal”.

If it really wanted to be taken seriously it would issue less nuanced and more hysterical statements.

Dan:

I don’t think that all the donors to the TPA are motivated by some selfless nobility. And the Institute for Fiscal Studies is a good think tank. But we do need a group with the media savvy and immediacy of the TPA. A group to keep waste in the headlights.

@Rumbold

The Taxpayers’ Alliance does have its flaws… However, it is still the best taxpayers’ pressure group we have.

You are kidding, right?

And none of the support you provide for this statement is unchallengeable. Government waste isn’t tackled by printing hysterical books listing a litany of rightwing grievances about certain isolated spending decisions.

The dappy TPA list of so-called “non-jobs” springs to mind. Basing one’s understanding of a role on its job title like the rightwing pressure group does is exactly the same as – to use to old proverb – judging a book by its cover.

I would love to see a non-partisan group doing this… [b]ut for the moment, I will stick with what we have.

Sheesh!

Not much to look forward to then, is there?! Certainly no chance of improving the quality of the debate if we’re relying on the rightwing version of the TPA, that’s for sure.

@7, if you believe taxes are too high, you are more or less unequivocally partisan and right-leaning. If you believe tax incidence is wrongly distributed, that’s another story – but that hasn’t been a major focus of the TPA.

John B @12, “if you believe taxes are too high, you are more or less unequivocally partisan and right-leaning”. If you believe tax incidence is wrongly distributed, that’s another story – but that hasn’t been a major focus of the TPA”.

Interesting assertion seeing as the most economically right wing post war UK government (Thatchers) had higher direct taxes (on the rich at least) than this one. Whether you think we are overtaxed or not probably depends on your lifestyle as much as your politics. If you drink, smoke, drive a car and earn anything more than a menial salary you notice the fact that you pay significant amounts of tax on an almost daily basis. If you’re a child-free, metropolitan public transport using tea-totalllaing smoke-free modest income bureacrat (i.e nu labours model citizen) then you probably don’t.

The TPA is a complete joke. I remeber their ranking of how good MEP’s were, where a procedural vote the TPA didn’t like= 25% of being an admitted fraudster. What a joke. They are just a partisan hard conservative group trying to pretend otherwise, and in this are as bad as many of the trot lefts past acts.

Its good that OTPA alliance tries to publicise this. I don’t really have much time for their agenda either though TBH, but at least they are open about it.

I’m so confused, Twat Munro! I thought us lefties were all fabulously wealthy? Now I hear that in fact we earn less than right-whingers.

You just can’t make up your mind which one of the mutually incompatible stereotypes you want to use, can you?

I believe that taxes are too high and fall too heavily on low wage earners. I would like to see a fall in the overall tax burden, with the reduction centred around raising the income tax and N.I. threshold to £13,400 (or there abouts), 13,400 being the sum recommended by the Rowntree Foundation. One of the best ways to cut the tax burden is to find and expose examples of waste.

The non-jobs example is a good case of where the TPA could improve. Most jobs have some sort of useful element, and this is what protects those non-jobs. The useful element might only be a few hours a week, so the focus should be on ensuring that the useful element is covered while not paying a full salary, pension etc. to that person.

Oh dear, Mr. Rumbold, I fear your usual powers of rational evidence-based thinking have stumbled into a serious pit of impenetrable wrongness.

The TPA are (for the many reasons outlined above) not a credible organisation.

I mean, c’mon, they even argue that the lottery is a form of taxation akin to the duty on alcohol (which is nonsense, there are plenty of alternative – and completely voluntary – means of gambling your cash readily available on the High Street).

What little they do right is entirely lost in the tsunami of dogmatism in their over-hyped-in-the-media output.

Sorry, but you’re seriously wrong on this one.

I took a long walk before starting to write this comment… The Taxpayers’ Alliance, you know, isn’t just about the money. The Taxpayers’ Alliance likes money, particularly their own, but the motivation of the organisation is to demoralise faith in public services.

Their mind works something like this: Public services == state intervention == more taxes. TPA obsess about the first two elements, because it inevitably leads to the third for them. A patient individual might try to explain that the state or a charitable body might intervene in a social crisis to mitigate the long term impact. Troubled people cost money, so it is efficacious to act early. But remember the old joke that a Conservative is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing?

I’m a more traditional liberal than most people around here. In theory, I should have more sympathy for TPA. But I despise them because they have adopted a liberal cloak to disguise their negativism.