It is, sometimes, Parliament, a wonderful thing. Here’s Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con.), moments after describing himself as “a capitalist, red in tooth and claw”, talking in 2008 about the levy on non-doms:

He’s tackling – head on – the one reason why we offer a tax sweetener to the wealthy with foreign connections to move to or stay in the UK. I’ve written elsewhere about the perverse effects flowing from the poor design of that sweetener. I’ve also asked some questions about whether HMRC are effectively policing it (and there is more to follow on that front). What I want to do today is look at the data: does it support the case that we need it to bring the wealthy into the UK – or keep them here?

But before I get to it, a few observations:

(1)  if you’re wealthy, thinking about moving, and comparing possible places to live you absolutely compare, amongst other factors, tax regimes. Our non-dom regime has something of a gravitational effect;

(2) the power of this gravitational effect is not constant. It might pull you here – but it doesn’t follow that you continue to need it to stay. Once you’ve found a comfortable social and cultural orbit – something London absolutely offers, at least to the wealthy – the removal of any tax sweetener that factored in your decision to move here will operate only weakly in your decision whether to stay;

(3)  cultural factors are important. The percentage of millionaires in New York (which doesn’t have a non-dom rule) is about a third higher than that in London (although it should be noted London does much ‘better’ when it comes to billionaires);

(4) the percentage of millionaires in both London and New York is a tiny fraction of that in the tax havens of Monaco, Zurich and Geneva. This should cause you to ask whether tax really is a major factor in London’s appeal to mobile individuals. Those motivated principally by tax have – and choose – ‘better’ alternatives; and

(5) I think it’s beyond sensible dispute that there are economic benefits for us all in attracting the wealthy to the UK. Many of the arguments to the contrary are, as I have argued elsewhere, confused.

Anyway. Those observations aside, the data.

What follows is a table garnered from various ‘official’ sources (to avoid clogging up the post, the sources for all of the data are given in a ‘comment’). The table shows the number of non-doms registered with HMRC over time. Do the Chicken Little arguments of those law firms who advise non-doms – that the effect of the introduction of the non-dom levy has been cataclysmic – stand up?

The non-dom levy was introduced in the tax year 2008-09. The number registered as Non Dom then in the country was 123,000. The number registered as Non Dom for the last available year (2011-12) is… 123,000.

The apparent peak was 140,000 in 2007-08. I say ‘apparent’ because there are very good reasons to be sceptical. It can only be right if there was a huge jump from 2005-06, followed by a matching huge fall to 2008-08 and all against a consistent pattern of gentle increase.

What does this mean? The only argument for tax sweeteners is that we need them to attract or retain the mobile wealthy. If – as the data shows – reducing those sweeteners hasn’t materially affected our ability to attract or retain them, it’s entirely proper to ask whether removing them would.

Note: I have not found figures for 1997-98, 1998-1999, 1999-00, 2006-07. The table, therefore, assumes a steady progression between the ‘known’ numbers on either side of the missing years.

Late February. How’s your New Year’s Resolution going? Not so well? Congratulations, you possess a necessary (but happily for George, not sufficient) qualification to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In its first Budget, 22 June 2010, this is what the Coalition said:

But am I making some party political point? I am not. This is what Labour said in its Pre-Budget report 2002:

And these are but the last two in a long line of failed resolutions: changes were considered in 1994, 1988 and…

There have been some reforms: Labour introduced a levy for non-doms: a £30,000 annual membership fee to belong to the best tax mitigation club there is. And the Tories have changed the fee structure to reflect the (perfectly sensible) notion that the less deserving you are of club membership, the more you should have to pay to continue to belong. Come April, if you’ve been resident in the UK for 17 of the last 20 years, it will cost you £90,000.

But proper reform? It’s the fiscal equivalent of getting a little more exercise. You know it’s a good thing but it’s just… so… well… Gosh, is that the time? There’s an election coming!

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What most proper (by which I mean non-tax haven) countries say is: if you live here we’ll charge you to tax on all your income and gains around the world. In the UK, we’ve carved out an exception to that rule: if you are not ‘domiciled’ here we’ll charge you tax only on the income or gains you bring in (or ‘remit’ – hence the remittance basis) to the UK. Your assets and income outside the UK won’t be charged to tax here – and, if you arrange your affairs carefully, might not be charged to tax anywhere. And your country of “domicile”? That’s your ‘home’ country.

I could write tens of thousands of words delineating the operation of these two key concepts: ‘domicile’ and ‘remittance’ basis. But to focus on how they work rather than what they accomplish is to miss the point. And the point is that the remittance basis is a fiscal sweetener – a bribe, if you like – payable to the wealthy with foreign connections to cause them to move to or remain in the United Kingdom.

It’s only having called it by name that we can turn to look at whether we should be paying it and, if we should, what it should look like.

Proponents of the non-dom rule say that it encourages wealthy foreigners to move to (they don’t say but do mean) London and spend their money in (also) London – and that brings benefits including additional tax receipts to the economy. They’re right.

Detractors say, looked at globally, the rule signals our enthusiastic participation in a race to the fiscal bottom which makes winners of the fantastically wealthy and losers of everyone else. They’re also right. Some detractors – a good recent example being the BBC’s recent The Super Rich and Us – also point to the fact that the arrival of wealthy foreigners hasn’t spelled the end for inequality in the UK. Someone, somewhere, possibly in Norfolk, will be flexing his blackboard ruler, but that seems to me a little like arguing that, because I’ve turned on my two-bar electric heater and I’m still cold, it follows that heaters don’t make you warmer.

But just stand back and accept the logic of the (good) points for a second. There are all sorts of ways in which we might entice wealthy foreigners to come and live here. Stable government, a civil service free of corruption, our cultural richness, excellent public infrastructure (someone stop me, please, before I get completely carried away). Do we need a fiscal inducement too? And if we do need a fiscal inducement is this the one?

To answer that question we’d need to model how many would leave, how many would fail to come, and what the loss would be to the economy. Many will tell you they can, or have, performed this exercise. For myself, I like to recall what the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which so often (and often accurately) tilts at fiscal forecasting had to say, back in 2007, about the effects of  rival political proposals for a non-dom levy:

This is the link for that pleasing flash of intellectual clarity.

But let’s press on, whilst recognising that to do so we’ll need to assume that sensible modelling is possible. Let’s also assume (controversially, but for the sake of argument) that we’d like to continue paying a sweetener.

The question then is, what should that sweetener look like? To answer that, you need to go back to my two key concepts: remittance and domicile.

The concept of domicile has many problems. The question whether X is domiciled in the UK often fails to admit of a clear answer: it is to borrow an attractive phrase (from Ian Jack) “a peculiar mixture of fact and intent”. Perhaps in consequence, legal challenges to domicile status are relatively rare (such that questions might sensibly be asked about whether all of those claiming the status actually have it). But most importantly of all, the line in the sand that the legal test draws is a pretty crappy way of separating out those we might want to give a sweetener to and those we might not. You might think that, after someone has put down roots, they might no longer need (or deserve) an incentive to come or remain here? But the domicile rule all but ignores that critical fact.

As to the remittance basis of taxation, it’s enormously complex to apply. That’s a thing modestly undesirable (to all but tax advisers). But its real failing is that it disincentivises the very thing we want to incentivise. The reason we give a sweetener to get wealthy foreigners to come here is not because we like their company (although often we do). The reason is that we want them to bring their money here and spend it here. Taxing them on the income and gains that they bring into the country discourages them from doing the very thing that the sweetener is designed to encourage them to do.

I don’t want to suggest policy on the hoof (he said, with the inevitable air of a man about to do so anyway). But it doesn’t take much imagination to think of mechanisms that might consistently promote the policy objective of offering a sweetener. If we are to have a tax mitigation club, what about a different one, with equally high annual subs, but that gave you a reduced rate of income tax or capital gains tax for the first, say, five or ten years of residence here? Not desperately politically palatable perhaps, but no less so than the present system properly understood, and likely to deliver far better economic results.

More modest reform might look like a domicile equivalent of the statutory residence test in the Finance Act 2013 – to create bright line tests between resident and non-resident status – coupled with a deemed domicile provision (akin to that in the Inheritance Tax Act 1984) by which you would be deemed to be a UK domiciliary after a number of years residing here.

But I’d love to hear your suggestions – and responses to the above – too.

Two events in sequence.

One: international consortium of journalists splashes on successive days on their investigation into tax evasion (many years ago) by clients of Bank X in Switzerland.

Two: a week later, the Swiss authorities raid the offices of Bank X.

Somewhere someone will contend the timing is mere coincidence. But it isn’t.

What can we learn from this sequence?

This: tax havens care about reputational issues.

I wrote in more detail about what business tax havens are really in here. They compete to attract foreigners’ money. If a UK depositor starts to ask himself questions about how HMRC will view his ownership of a Swiss bank account – will it be a red flag? – he will wonder whether to move his money elsewhere. And it’s to avoid that happening – to give the appearance of Switzerland being a respectable player in the global fiscal community – that the Swiss clamp down. And, whatever the reasons for it, that clamp down improves local compliance.

If you want to reduce tax evasion, or money laundering, you need to find ways to bring pressure to bear on how tax havens operate. You need to recognise that they are so often in the business of disrupting sightlines between the money and those who own it. Improve those sightlines and you can meaningfully threaten sanctions. Meaningfully threaten sanctions and you reduce tax evasion and money laundering. Sightlines and sanctions.

What we can learn from today’s crackdown in Switzerland is that reputational issues are an effective lever.

So, well done – in the UK – the Guardian and Panorama. Well done for shining a torch into Swiss vaults. And now, let’s have a little more please.

Here’s Iain Duncan Smith, on paying tradesmen in cash, speaking yesterday:

But hang on a second, here’s the Daily Mail responding to observations on the same subject made by the present Financial Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, in 2012:

Those bloody Tories, eh? But wait, wait, wait, wait up. Here’s Ed Miliband speaking on tax avoidance on Saturday:

And here he is speaking on tax avoidance in 2012:

What are we to take from all of this? Nothing attractive, although it’s reassuring that the public sees through it. This is YouGov, polled on 12-13 February:

Credit to the Mail, source of all four of the quotes set out above.

There’s no denying it’s hard to bring successful criminal prosecutions against tax evaders. The complexity of the tax system makes it tough to get a lay jury over the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ line. And it’s not easy to get the evidence together. Tax havens don’t want to develop a reputation for making enthusiastic disclosures of the affairs of their banks’ clients because, well, those clients might choose to move their money elsewhere.

But having achieved a decent evidential foothold, you’d hope HMRC would take advantage? Wouldn’t you?

Yesterday Richard Murphy, the well known tax campaigner, pointed to one instance of apparent failure of this principle: you have a tax amnesty to encourage people you might not otherwise find out about to come forward voluntarily and put their tax affairs in order. But why would you offer an amnesty to those you already knew about? In her evidence before the Public Accounts Committee, Lin Homer said that HMRC had “encouraged” 500 taxpayers – whose affairs had been made known to HMRC through information on the Falciani disk – to take advantage of an amnesty (called the “Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility”) offering very low penalties on unpaid tax and immunity from criminal prosecution. These were 500 taxpayers whose affairs were non-compliant, which non-compliance we knew about, and we were offering them an amnesty. Seems odd to me.

But there’s a further puzzle. Forget the Falciani disclosures for a second. Back in 2012 we signed an agreement with Switzerland which presented a satisfying dilemma to non-compliant UK resident taxpayers with accounts there: either (1) agree with the Swiss that you would make a full disclosure of your affairs to HMRC and take your chances with swingeing penalties and/or criminal prosecutions or (2) preserve your anonymity and suffer an initial tax charge of 21-41% of your capital, together with further on-going tax charges and the threat of criminal prosecution in the future. (Although, for reasons unclear to me, if you took option (2) and kept your affairs secret, we promised the Swiss that criminal prosecutions would be “highly unlikely”.)

(Side note: a somewhat unappreciated aspect of the #SwissLeaks disclosures is that, as the Guardian reported, HSBC then set about selling to its individual clients a mechanic involving the interposition of a ‘special purpose vehicle’ between the clients and their accounts which gave to their clients a third option: do nothing.)

So, leaving aside those lucky HSBC clients, HMRC had you where they wanted you: (1) high initial tax charge, future tax charges and continuing risk (albeit for reasons unclear small) of criminal prosecution or (2) face the music at home.

And then? HMRC seem to have let everyone off the hook. They encouraged taxpayers to take advantage of the benefit of the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility amnesty. This is what HMRC’s own Swiss-UK Tax Co-operation Agreement Factsheet says:

Here’s how Grant Thornton quite fairly sum up the choice offered to tax non-compliant UK residents with Swiss accounts:

HMRC is responsible for collecting around £500,000,000,000 of taxes a year. So we’re entitled to be interested in how it operates.

And this week has been pretty disastrous for public confidence in HMRC. There has been a growing suspicion of one rule for wealthy tax evaders who benefit both from amnesties and a policy decision to avoid prosecutions and another rule for the rest of us. These suspicions have stemmed from the disclosure that, to date, of the 3,500 or so cases investigated by HMRC arising from the Falciani disclosures of misconduct at HSBC, only three cases have been passed to the CPS and only one prosecution has been brought.

Today HMRC responded with a lengthy statement defending their record “on Tax Evasion and the HSBC Suisse Data Leak”. You can read it here.

I’m not going to go through that statement line by line. On the subject of criminal prosecutions, what it does say is:

But it doesn’t tell you what those convictions are for. Offshore tax evasion, presumably. But let’s check.

If you click on the link you get this graphic: If you add those convictions together you get 2005. Perhaps the other 600 (of the 2,650 referred to) are Jan to Apr 2010 and Apr to Dec 2014. But the real question is whether those are convictions relating to offshore tax evasion or for all offences. Because we’re not told.

But what we do know from other documents released by HMRC (in particular this one) is that in 2013 HMRC achieved 690 successful convictions – broadly consistent with the figures set out above. What’s interesting about the document linked to earlier in this paragraph is that is tells you what the convictions were for. And this is what it tells you:

Stand back from all the detail for a second.

What we know is that in a document designed to defend its record of achieving criminal convictions in tax evasion and the HSBC Suisse tax leaks – that being its title – HMRC is relying on convictions it has achieved in benefit fraud cases: cases like this:

It’s possible – we don’t know – that they haven’t achieved even one conviction for offshore tax evasion.

That would be pretty alarming. As is the suggestion that HMRC haven’t been entirely frank with us.

A story.

I have a friend. No, a real friend. I’ve known him forever and he’s the most risk averse person I’ve ever met. He was risk averse at University. And his job now? Think of the job that would be suited to the most constitutionally risk averse person in the world. No, more risk averse than that. That’s what he does.

He lives in an estate. No, the kind where houses are especially expensive. And several years ago he called me up because he was buying what us Labour Party voters these days call a mansion. And he wanted to know whether he should accept his solicitors’ suggestion to use a stamp duty avoidance scheme.

No need to discuss the technical details of how these schemes operate. But promoter develops ‘idea’; punts idea to public through a range of intermediaries. Charges punters 30% of stamp duty land tax saving – to be paid upfront, naturally – with a money back guarantee if the scheme doesn’t work. Punter pays the 30%. HMRC challenges the scheme. Scheme fails. Punter pays the 100% stamp duty he should have paid in the first place. Asks promoter for his 30% money back. Promoter (who has spent all the money in the meantime) winds company up. And punter asks himself (because the data shows that tax avoidance is typically carried out by men, even allowing for the effects of gendered wealth distribution) ‘why did I ever do that?’

That’s a question to keep punters awake at night. Because even though they might forgive themselves for not understanding the technical bits of the planning, they tend to find it more difficult to work out how they came to ignore something full square within their expertise: the credit risk they were taking on an unknown counterparty (the promoter).

Interesting side note: I think I am right in saying that no residential stamp duty land tax scheme has ever been held to work.

Of course, I told my friend “no”. I would never do one – those with specialist tax knowledge tend to have rather simple tax affairs – and with his risk profile he certainly shouldn’t. And so he didn’t.

What’s interesting about that story is not that he contemplated it – a fact interesting only to me, who knows him – but why he contemplated it.

In his estate, everyone was doing it. The neighbours to the right of him bought their house with a scheme, as did those to the left, as did everyone in the town. It was being sold by estate agents as part of the service. So that even those heavily inclined against such behaviour (such as my friend) were eventually left wondering, well, ‘perhaps these things really are ok?’ or ‘who’s the mug here?’

Those really in the know will probably know the town I’m talking about. But you don’t need to know the town. If you read the lists of members of partners of tax avoidance schemes – very often done through a vehicle called a Limited Liability Partnership – and the lists can be downloaded from Companies House, you’ll see the same effect. Let’s call it the Mug effect. You’ll see mouthfuls of dentists, or the whole squad of a particular football team, or staff of a particular bank.

I thought of this yesterday when I read that Swiss Bank accounts had become popular in the 1980s such that ‘probably anyone who was a member of a golf club then had a bank account in Switzerland’. In a different sphere (evasion) to the stamp duty sphere (avoidance) discussed above, the Mug effect remains a powerful force.

Now I’ve written elsewhere about the balance that HMRC seek to strike in tackling tax evasion.

On the one hand, there’s the pragmatic desire to maximise the cash you get in. You want people to come forward and ‘fess up. And if you send the signal you’ll bash them if they do, they won’t. I’ve also written about how the evidence is that this policy has failed to deliver.

On the other hand, you know that those who are wealthy and powerful are subject to the same rule of law as the rest of us. Or should be – that’s what Magna Carta says. And you know that society demands they be held accountable for any criminality. There’s also the more prosaic concern that, if you allow people to believe there will be another amnesty from criminal sanction for tax evaders around the corner, they won’t see the point of coming forward for this one: you’ll make it more difficult to achieve your pragmatic desire to maximise the cash.

But there’s also this isn’t there? You need constantly to be reminding people that evasion isn’t ok. Lest the Mug effect take hold. And the best way to accomplish that is a constant stream of criminal prosecutions for evasion. And we haven’t been having them – not amongst wealthy evaders anyway.

Now, to bring those prosecutions, you need to know where in the tax system the Mug effect is taking hold. And according to an excellent report by the National Audit Office, HMRC doesn’t. And nor does anyone else. But that’s a blog for another day.

Following years of front page stories of personal and corporate tax avoidance, damaging allegations of sweetheart deals with major global banks and telecommunications firms, multi-billion pound shortfalls on projected receipts from tax amnesties cut with Switzerland, and the absence of criminal prosecutions for tax evasion, you’ve gotta wonder quite how much worse public confidence in HMRC can get.

The explanation for the latest in these public relations disasters – the absence of criminal prosecutions – is apparently that HMRC cut a deal with the French authorities for use of the HSBC data that limited the extent to which it could be used to support criminal prosecutions. But what puzzles me is (1) why the French would be interested in imposing such a restraint on our use of that data. Their banks weren’t implicated after all; and (2) if that is the cause of the lack of criminal prosecutions how we’ve nevertheless managed one?

Raising further questions about that explanation is the fact that Article 27 of the UK-France Double Tax Convention requires each party to exchange information “to prevent fraud”.

So that’s one set of questions we need answers to from HMRC

Another is this statement released at the time we cut the amnesty with Switzerland in March 2012.

Why not? Why should we tie our hands as to how we gather evidence of people evading UK taxes?

No substantive answers, yet, to these sets of questions.

In terms of process, HMRC’s response to these issues of profound public concern has been to pull the man responsible for “shaping tax policy and strategy” from this afternoon’s Public Accounts Committee session, to ignore the question ‘why’? and to fail to offer up to the Committee the woman responsible for ensuring that “HMRC successfully collects the full and correct amount of money due from UK taxpayers [and] investigates offences against the UK tax system”.

How much worse? Quite a lot worse.

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Postscript HMRC’s Press Office have just sent me the following statement denying that Edward Troup was ever slated to give evidence. That may or may not be right (Post-postscript: see below – it appears not to be) but it’s hardly the point. He should have been slated and he should be giving evidence.

HMRC’s Press Office now say that Jennie Granger was always slated to appear. My mistake (no mention of this was made in the Telegraph report). But if one looks at the Public Accounts Committee listing for this afternoon’s hearing

you will see that, consistently with what the Press Office say, Jennie Granger will appear but inconsistently with what they say Edward Troup was slated to appear.

The twitter exchange between me and HMRC’s Press Office can be seen here:

Two sleights of hand.

#1 – the Google Defence: “You should pay the taxes that are legally required.” Unpacked, this means merely: “because it’s lawful, we can do it.” Tax avoidance – even in its most egregious forms – is lawful. If it isn’t lawful, it doesn’t work. And the answer is a defence to a different criticism: if I am non-domiciled, even if I have lived in the UK for all my life, I only have to pay tax on that income I choose to spend in the UK. The question isn’t whether that state of affairs is legal. It is. The question is whether it’s right.

And #2 – the Lawmaker Fallacy: if Parliament doesn’t like our avoidance actions it should “change the law.” But this is to ignore the limited scope that our domestic Parliament, bound by a web of international tax treaties and EU law, has unilaterally to improve the law. Particularly in the field of business tax. If Amazon sites its servers outside the UK, the present OECD rules enable it to avoid UK corporation tax. But effecting broad based change to these laws involves the OECD shepherding the G20 countries to agreement in the face of powerful domestic vested interests.Think Global Climate Change Summits with whistles.

These are the fallacies you’ll be fed by those seeking to deflect criticism. You’ll see them deployed over the next few days by players in the #SwissLeaks #SwissStorm. And they are the truth, but they are not the whole truth.

We know this: tax specialists like me, Inspectors working for HMRC, Parliamentarians, Charities pushing the Tax Dodging Bill and the promoters of the FairTaxMark. We see that the law on tax avoidance has fallen behind what the public demands. And we fear the corrosive effects of a loss of public confidence on the functioning of our tax system.

We work with the world we have. The work of the Public Accounts Committee under Margaret Hodge – appreciated as an exercise in consciousness raising rather than forensic scrutiny – has raised to Gas Mark 9 the temperature on tax avoidance. Consumer pressure has pulled tax to the top of what we politely style ‘Corporate Social Responsibility Agenda’. And the Government has played its part, using the Code of Practice on Taxation for Banks and new rules on Public Procurement, to try and ensure there’s a pre-tax cost attached to behaviours that focus only on improving post-tax returns.

I wouldn’t want to understate the power of self-interest to bring about changes in behaviour: it may well be the defining logical proposition of human history. But, in a field so laden with opportunities to obfuscate and dissemble, in a field where minimal compliance carries such obvious rewards, it has its limitations.

So what, ultimately, we’re left with is a naked ethical proposition: pay less than your share and you bear responsibility for society being not as it should. This proposition has been advanced by, for example Christian Aid, in its ‘Tax for the common good’ report. But there’s much work to be done in fleshing it out. In a world where the tax laws distantly trail ethical injunctions, what does a fair share really look like?