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TAXTOPIA: How I Discovered the Injustices, Scams and Guilty Secrets of the Tax Evasion Game
'A shocking, enraging, sometimes hilarious exposé of a tax system that lives down to all our worst fears of further enriching the wealthy at the expense of the little guys.' - Piers Morgan
'Very funny (and furious)... This is not some crazed figure on the extreme left hoping to bring down the establishment. The book is written by an accountant who has spent his career coming up with the very tax avoidance schemes the super-wealthy use to evade the clutches of HMRC.' - The Telegraph
'Funny, clever and really quite brilliant. Taxtopia will make you furiously angry and possibly even filthy rich.' - Tom Peck, The Independent
'If you want to know how skewed the system is and how the rich always get richer and stay that way, while you don't, then read this book. Then get angry.' - Patrick Alley, Co-founder of Global Witness and author of Very Bad People
'A hilarious and deeply troubling expose about how the world's shady tax system is exploited and proves what we always suspected - that our tax system is rigged against us. Read it and weep.' - Geraint Anderson author of City Boy
'Would I recommend the book? Yes, and it may also be worth going back over some of the more interesting ideas with your accountant' -Spear's
In TAXTOPIA a rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naïf to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear.
In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do.
Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.
If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is.
Welcome to TAXTOPIA.
'Very funny (and furious)... This is not some crazed figure on the extreme left hoping to bring down the establishment. The book is written by an accountant who has spent his career coming up with the very tax avoidance schemes the super-wealthy use to evade the clutches of HMRC.' - The Telegraph
'Funny, clever and really quite brilliant. Taxtopia will make you furiously angry and possibly even filthy rich.' - Tom Peck, The Independent
'If you want to know how skewed the system is and how the rich always get richer and stay that way, while you don't, then read this book. Then get angry.' - Patrick Alley, Co-founder of Global Witness and author of Very Bad People
'A hilarious and deeply troubling expose about how the world's shady tax system is exploited and proves what we always suspected - that our tax system is rigged against us. Read it and weep.' - Geraint Anderson author of City Boy
'Would I recommend the book? Yes, and it may also be worth going back over some of the more interesting ideas with your accountant' -Spear's
In TAXTOPIA a rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naïf to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear.
In the topsy-turvy world of tax avoidance, you can get richer by buying a yacht, the world's biggest exporter of coffee is Switzerland, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do.
Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind.
If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is.
Welcome to TAXTOPIA.
368 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 30, 2023
257 people are currently reading
2032 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 125 reviews
March 31, 2023
Tax is one of those things that I have paid since I started working many many years ago. Every month without fail the PAYE pops its head up and snaffles a chuck of the money that I have earnt that month. I am not unhappy about it, it has after all paid for my three children to be educated at minimal cost to me, pays for the roads that I drive on and paid for the ongoing treatment that Sarah has had for cancer.
It is something that I am happy to pay for as I know that it has wider benefits for society as well as myself. There are a number of people though who want to enjoy similar benefits as I do. These people are often wealthy and regardless of the way that they have accumulated their money, do not want to be encumbered with taxation. If they are in that tiny group of people who are so mind-bogglingly rich that they are often very reluctant to part with any of their money at all.
The Rebel Accountant has been one of the professionals who has helped this class of people evade and avoid anything that looks like a tax. So much so that someone with vast sums can often pay much less tax than you do in a year. They do this in several ways, firstly by employing clever people to find the loopholes that in the extremely complex tax systems, secondly but just not bothering and most infuriatingly, they gamed the systems to ensure that the people who have to pay taxes are you and me and not them.
I think that was his intention for those reading this book to be made very angry. And having read it I can confirm that it does. The entire taxation system is utterly broken and it isn’t helped by the endemic corruption of our political system that helps those with money get more and keep more. This will be at the expense of our society too if steps are not taken to address it. Even given the subject matter, it is quite an entertaining read; he is that rarest of people, an accountant with a bone-dry sense of humour. There was never a point when he ventured into the arcane depth of tax law, rather it was kept at a level that almost everyone would be able to understand. Don’t read this and weep, read this and start to put pressure on our political leaders.
It is something that I am happy to pay for as I know that it has wider benefits for society as well as myself. There are a number of people though who want to enjoy similar benefits as I do. These people are often wealthy and regardless of the way that they have accumulated their money, do not want to be encumbered with taxation. If they are in that tiny group of people who are so mind-bogglingly rich that they are often very reluctant to part with any of their money at all.
The Rebel Accountant has been one of the professionals who has helped this class of people evade and avoid anything that looks like a tax. So much so that someone with vast sums can often pay much less tax than you do in a year. They do this in several ways, firstly by employing clever people to find the loopholes that in the extremely complex tax systems, secondly but just not bothering and most infuriatingly, they gamed the systems to ensure that the people who have to pay taxes are you and me and not them.
I think that was his intention for those reading this book to be made very angry. And having read it I can confirm that it does. The entire taxation system is utterly broken and it isn’t helped by the endemic corruption of our political system that helps those with money get more and keep more. This will be at the expense of our society too if steps are not taken to address it. Even given the subject matter, it is quite an entertaining read; he is that rarest of people, an accountant with a bone-dry sense of humour. There was never a point when he ventured into the arcane depth of tax law, rather it was kept at a level that almost everyone would be able to understand. Don’t read this and weep, read this and start to put pressure on our political leaders.
November 20, 2023
Very interesting book. It will make you laugh at some points, but mostly, it will make you feel discuss and outrage against the current tax system employed in most western countries. The system is full not of “loopholes”, but of intentional tax-breaks laws designed for the rich.
If you want just one example, take Rishi Sunaks wife, which avoids at least 20 million in taxes by claiming “non-domicile” status, which she can do by paying a “small” fee of 30 thousand. All of this is “legal”, so no loophole here.
If you want just one example, take Rishi Sunaks wife, which avoids at least 20 million in taxes by claiming “non-domicile” status, which she can do by paying a “small” fee of 30 thousand. All of this is “legal”, so no loophole here.
March 10, 2025
Echt een gigantische aanrader. Bijzonder grappig ook voor mensen die geen fiscalisen zijn, maar echt hysterisch en super herkenbaar als je wel al kennis hebt van de achterliggende belastingsystemen. Ga dit lezen! (Met name jullie @Kim @Honjia jullie zijn de enige fiscalisten met mijn goodreads)
May 31, 2024
This book is both thought-provoking and funny. It's difficult to write an accounting page-turner but this is a valiant effort. The author intermingles tax evasion strategies with his rise in the industry. There's too much about him in sections and I found myself wanting to return to the main thread. I'd prefer a more serious tome, and it's a serious topic, which to be fair the author treats seriously, just injecting plenty of humour too. I'm sure there will be a sequel (in the new tax year).
October 19, 2025
Fascinating exposure of all the loopholes in the tax system that the wealthiest employ tax accountants to exploit
July 13, 2025
Don't mind me, just learning about what not to do so that I can pay as much tax as I can. There's at least one utterly preposterous lie in this book, so even though the author admits to melding scenarios and people together, take your tax tactics under advisement
August 5, 2024
If you have a career in accounting, you will enjoy this book. The anonymous author—the Rebel Accountant—is British and has a good sense of humor. Many of his stories of working in public accounting will resonate with you, especially what he says about timesheets:
"…you have to fill in timesheets. …what did you do between 10:06am and 10:12am last Tuesday? And the six minutes after that? And after that? Imagine this is your life. …Would it lead you to cheat? …timesheets bore little resemblance to what our clients got charged. …Timesheets are a genuine opportunity for a little creativity."
There are a lot of great examples of tax avoidance (legal) strategies deployed by wealthy people, some are quite famous. There’s also some tax evasion (illegal), such as the “carousel frauds,” elaborate VAT tax scams. You’ll learn that salesman of yachts don’t get the crew bedrooms as rooms, usually one-half or so of total rooms, because “these rich bastards don’t care where the crew sleep.” You’ll learn that “punishable by a fine means legal for a price.” I agree with him that R&D tax credit fees paid to accountants are an “absolute racket.”
All that said, there are many things I disagree with the author when it comes to tax policy. He admits in the Notes that he’s not an economist, and it shows. Economists own tax policy, not CPAs, despite the number of reports he’s read on tax reform by Big 4 partners. Has he ever read any by economists who study tax policy? There’s many out there. We don’t need more CPAs in Congress, we need more economists who understand that taxation contains the power to destroy. The Laffer curve is true, but you wouldn’t know it reading this work (it’s even disparaged early on as drunk scribbling on dinner napkins). There are no economists cited in the book (maybe Adam Smith was), which is a glaring hole in a book about taxes.
The author believes that “accountants are cheating the system to ensure that their clients, people with serious money, are paying a lot less tax than they should be.” Ok, but what is should be? Is there any limiting principle? Should it be 100% beyond, say, $100,000 per year income? If not, why not? If there is a limiting principle, then you have validated the Laffer Curve.
At least he understands what a corporation is: “allows strangers to pool their resources to embark on a common endeavor.” Also, that corporations don’t pay taxes. (Yes! I’ve met CPAs who don’t understand this point).
In the last chapter he lays out his vision of Taxtopia, which contains no corporation income taxes (since corporations don’t pay tax; only people do):
1. A universal tax you pay when you get richer
2. A sales tax based on the harms caused by the products we buy
3. A withholding tax to stop offshoring wealth
Call #1 a wealth tax, #2 a sales tax, or whatever else you want to call it, but all taxes are income taxes, because that’s the only place the money comes from to pay them.
His No Value Added Tax would be an incredibly complex—and highly political—tax to deploy. Who decides which goods and services are harmful? Value is subjective, see the Austrian school of economics and Marginalism. You think the 2 million word USA tax code is complex now, just try a NVAT.
A flat tax has laid out by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka, Steve Forbes, Dick Armey, Arthur Laffer, among others, is a much better idea. If it contained a personal exemption, it would be a progressive tax, just not graduated, a distinction the author never speaks of.
I do agree when he writes:
"The conclusion I came to was that almost all jobs in tax shouldn’t really exist. There’s no need for the complexity, for the endless forms and years of exams. Taxation shouldn’t be something that it’s possible to be an expert in. It shouldn’t be something that requires analysis, or planning. It should all be, well, simple."
It's an enormous waste of human capital. The problem is, his fix isn’t simple, while the flat tax is. He should pin the problem where it belongs: on legislatures. They like complexity, accountants do, too, but they don’t write the tax laws, nor have much influence on them. I used to think a flat tax was possible, but I no longer do. Congress will never give up the power to socially engineer the economy, and play Nanny over people’s lives, unless we get more enlightened leaders (Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan come to mind). Disagreements aside, this was an enjoyable read.
"…you have to fill in timesheets. …what did you do between 10:06am and 10:12am last Tuesday? And the six minutes after that? And after that? Imagine this is your life. …Would it lead you to cheat? …timesheets bore little resemblance to what our clients got charged. …Timesheets are a genuine opportunity for a little creativity."
There are a lot of great examples of tax avoidance (legal) strategies deployed by wealthy people, some are quite famous. There’s also some tax evasion (illegal), such as the “carousel frauds,” elaborate VAT tax scams. You’ll learn that salesman of yachts don’t get the crew bedrooms as rooms, usually one-half or so of total rooms, because “these rich bastards don’t care where the crew sleep.” You’ll learn that “punishable by a fine means legal for a price.” I agree with him that R&D tax credit fees paid to accountants are an “absolute racket.”
All that said, there are many things I disagree with the author when it comes to tax policy. He admits in the Notes that he’s not an economist, and it shows. Economists own tax policy, not CPAs, despite the number of reports he’s read on tax reform by Big 4 partners. Has he ever read any by economists who study tax policy? There’s many out there. We don’t need more CPAs in Congress, we need more economists who understand that taxation contains the power to destroy. The Laffer curve is true, but you wouldn’t know it reading this work (it’s even disparaged early on as drunk scribbling on dinner napkins). There are no economists cited in the book (maybe Adam Smith was), which is a glaring hole in a book about taxes.
The author believes that “accountants are cheating the system to ensure that their clients, people with serious money, are paying a lot less tax than they should be.” Ok, but what is should be? Is there any limiting principle? Should it be 100% beyond, say, $100,000 per year income? If not, why not? If there is a limiting principle, then you have validated the Laffer Curve.
At least he understands what a corporation is: “allows strangers to pool their resources to embark on a common endeavor.” Also, that corporations don’t pay taxes. (Yes! I’ve met CPAs who don’t understand this point).
In the last chapter he lays out his vision of Taxtopia, which contains no corporation income taxes (since corporations don’t pay tax; only people do):
1. A universal tax you pay when you get richer
2. A sales tax based on the harms caused by the products we buy
3. A withholding tax to stop offshoring wealth
Call #1 a wealth tax, #2 a sales tax, or whatever else you want to call it, but all taxes are income taxes, because that’s the only place the money comes from to pay them.
His No Value Added Tax would be an incredibly complex—and highly political—tax to deploy. Who decides which goods and services are harmful? Value is subjective, see the Austrian school of economics and Marginalism. You think the 2 million word USA tax code is complex now, just try a NVAT.
A flat tax has laid out by Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka, Steve Forbes, Dick Armey, Arthur Laffer, among others, is a much better idea. If it contained a personal exemption, it would be a progressive tax, just not graduated, a distinction the author never speaks of.
I do agree when he writes:
"The conclusion I came to was that almost all jobs in tax shouldn’t really exist. There’s no need for the complexity, for the endless forms and years of exams. Taxation shouldn’t be something that it’s possible to be an expert in. It shouldn’t be something that requires analysis, or planning. It should all be, well, simple."
It's an enormous waste of human capital. The problem is, his fix isn’t simple, while the flat tax is. He should pin the problem where it belongs: on legislatures. They like complexity, accountants do, too, but they don’t write the tax laws, nor have much influence on them. I used to think a flat tax was possible, but I no longer do. Congress will never give up the power to socially engineer the economy, and play Nanny over people’s lives, unless we get more enlightened leaders (Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan come to mind). Disagreements aside, this was an enjoyable read.
December 3, 2024
As an accountant myself I found it relatable at times but liked the humour and entertainment the most. The writer shares a lot of personal life stories and style is lighthearted which makes it fun read even for non financial audience
July 29, 2024
This should be a mandatory read for anyone that likes to understand the world. I don't know how valuable such a book could be for someone that already knows about taxes, but for me it's probably the first time I think about this utterly boring thing.
It's a very engaging book. It's a kind of a memoir filled with jokes, which also explains taxes. But really well blended together. The big point of the book is that taxes are paid by poor people, the well to do simply pay accountants to find loopholes. Eg: moving your wealth off shore by being a non resident, using VAT carousel, etc.
It's a very engaging book. It's a kind of a memoir filled with jokes, which also explains taxes. But really well blended together. The big point of the book is that taxes are paid by poor people, the well to do simply pay accountants to find loopholes. Eg: moving your wealth off shore by being a non resident, using VAT carousel, etc.
August 14, 2025
some good examples of how tax is overly complicated - and enjoyed the aca anecdotes - but not convinced his ideas about how tax could be simplified would work.
he proposes:
1. wealth increase tax to replace all income and capital taxes
2. non-VAT for negative externalities
3. withholding tax
some issues include:
- this wouldn't capture capital gains in shareholdings in British operations held by foreign nationals - companies would return wealth to shareholders via share value rather than dividend
- pricing negative externalities is likely to be very controversial and complex
etc
he proposes:
1. wealth increase tax to replace all income and capital taxes
2. non-VAT for negative externalities
3. withholding tax
some issues include:
- this wouldn't capture capital gains in shareholdings in British operations held by foreign nationals - companies would return wealth to shareholders via share value rather than dividend
- pricing negative externalities is likely to be very controversial and complex
etc
January 6, 2025
The tax accountant equivalent of the now famous junior doctor’s “This Is Going To Hurt”. Brilliantly and wittily describes the many tax loopholes available to the rich and even opens up the debate of how taxes might be shifted from disincentivising the desirable (eg jobs) to deterring the undesirable (eg pollution).
July 13, 2025
This is a mildly informative book, with some interesting facts and anecdotes but which grossly underdelivers on two fronts: the breadth and depth of aggressive tax management schemes out there, and the author's policy recommendations at the end which, for lack of a better word, are utter nonsense. So-so.
August 2, 2023
Very good read. A bit dramatic at times in the aim to create controversy, but for someone who works in tax, its not as theatrical as "the rebel accountant" is making it out to be. Although maybe it is?
June 27, 2024
Who knew there could be an interesting book about tax! The anonymous (why?) author describes his years as a tax consultant in various, sometimes very shady, tax organisations focused on reducing client’s tax liabilities. Sometimes fairly, sometimes dubiously. The book ends with his suggestions as to how the tax system could be changed to be less complex and fairer. It will never happen!!!
March 17, 2024
Absolutt ikke dum. Ty for anbefaling James
April 3, 2024
As a junior accountant (though not in tax), I particularly enjoyed Taxtopia and learning about all the different ways the wealthy hide tax as well as the really interesting suggestions by the author as to how to make a fairer tax system. Definitely worth a read
March 26, 2025
With much humour, the "Rebel Accountant" exposes many of the schemes exploited by the wealthy to avoid paying their taxes.
April 30, 2025
One of the most interesting and well written books I’ve read, the authors humour really makes light of the subject which in itself was extremely interesting.
July 26, 2025
Really interesting and written in a really accessible way, I’d definitely recommend if you want to learn more about tax in an easy to understand way
February 9, 2025
I went back to the remainder pile after walking a block down the road. This book was 50% off and I was vaguely interested in how people dodge tax. And I thought that this was what the book was all about. And, indeed it is. In a way, it’s all rather depressing. The “Anonymous” author makes the point that the tax laws are so complex that nobody understands them. But they are framed in such a way as to advantage the already wealthy. If you are an ordinary worker...you will have to pay every penny of tax but if you are one of the 7,000 people in the top 0.001% of the population in terms of wealth. Then you don’t need to pay any tax.
He has a throw-away line in there where he says that over a lifetime “About half your wealth will disappear as tax”. And the really disturbing thing is that most of the loopholes are blatantly obvious and people are not breaking the law by using them.
He writes very well...and amusingly. Certainly got me in......and that’s no mean feat to write an entertaining and interesting book about tax.
I have an English, accountant friend, who lives and works in Australia and I’m wondering if he has read it yet because I think he would be interested. ...The author spent some time in Australia and has a number of examples of Australian practice.
One of the take-aways is that it seems most of the tax rorts are enabled by treating companies differently to individuals when it comes to tax. And if I understand the author correctly, he is suggesting that this should be changed so that it’s no longer advantageous for your wholly owned company in Jersey to purchase a house (or car, or school fees) and then allow you to use it or rent it or take out a loan. ...But maybe I need to re-read his ideas on this.
Here are a few snippets that caught my attention as I was reading:
“This is what unsettled me when I saw the light-hearted sketch of the accountant who rebels with a bit of clandestine rounding - out there in the real world, accountants are cheating the system to ensure that their clients, people with serious money, are paying a lot less tax than they should be. And as a consequence of these rebel accountants, not only are schools and hospitals and roads and the rest receiving a lot less money, but you are paying a lot more tax than you need to be. That's not quite as funny.
Except the maddening thing is that most accountants don't even need to be rebels. Most of the time the rules don't need circumventing or manipulating, because the rules have been written under the guidance of those people with very serious money.
About half your wealth will disappear as tax over the course of your life - a little less if you're Australian or American, a little more if you're European. You'll probably spend more on tax than you will on all the homes you'll live in, the cars you'll drive and the food you'll eat combined, but I'll bet you find it easier to read a nutrition label than the deductions coming out of your payslip. I bet you know more about whether a neighbourhood is a nice one to live in than you are able to figure out how much tax you'll pay to live there.
You're not meant to know about tax. It's kept complex for a reason.
Ifyou knew what was really going on, you'd be the one who would want to rebel. If you understood that you were paying perhaps four times the tax rate of multi-millionaires, and more in absolute terms than some billionaires, would you stand for it?
This means that if you earned £20,000 a year renting out your Hong Kong apartment, you would have to pay UK tax on that rent, but if you earned £2,000,000 a year renting out an entire Hong Kong apartment block you would just hand over a £30,000 fee each year to pay no UK tax at all (which is a bargain, when the tax on the income from that apartment block would have been around €900,000 per year).
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that our tax laws are
specifically designed to reward the wealthy.
Now imagine you'd inherited a huge amount of (mostly offshore) wealth. Actually I don't quite mean that. I mean you didn't inherit the wealth, but an offshore trust did of which you are a named beneficiary.
Were you just a normal Brit without an offshore trust you would declare your worldwide income on your tax return and find yourself with a tax bill that took away almost half your income.
How beastly.
To avoid this frightful state of affairs you could make a visit to
someone like Wilhelm.
If you join the 1 per cent you might have a slightly bigger house in a smarter neighbourhood You might have a nanny and send your kids to private school, but fundamentally your day-to-day won't be much different than if you're in the top 50 per cent. But get into the top 0.01 per cent and normal everyday chores evaporate. I knew one client who paid €4,000 a week for a concierge service, which she only used for booking restaurants and, on one occasion, ordering some new towels (because she didn't know how else to buy towels).
The top 0.01 per cent doesn't trip off the tongue so well, but there are still a good six or seven thousand people in this 0.01 per cent in the UK alone. That's a lot of potential clients.
But the one big capital purchase we're all likely to make in our lives that actually loses money - our car - is exempt from capital gains tax...... So if you buy a car to, you know, drive it, the car will lose its value and you get no benefit from that loss. But if you buy a car as an investment, and stick it in your climate-controlled garage alongside your McLaren F1 ($19.8 million) or Ferrari 250 ($78 million) or 1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SLR Coupe (a record-breaking €135 million), you can sell it at a profit and not pay any tax at all.
One of the easiest ways for the really ridiculously wealthy to avoid paying taxes is to use the wealth they already have as collateral and borrow money instead.
Elon Musk, for instance, is said to have never accepted a pay cheque from Tesla - though he was offered minimum wage (for legal reasons.
And yet, he's still doing all right. If he finds himself needing a bit of cash, he can borrow it. Borrowing money doesn't make you richer - you still owe the bank, after all - but it does mean that you now have cash in your pocket, and still own all your Tesla shares.
You read that right. Elon can get cash to buy things without earning anything at all. And where there are no earnings, there's no tax.
The "Die" part of "Buy, Borrow, Die" goes like this: when a billionaire dies, the borrowed money reduces their taxable estate, so their heirs pay less tax too (though also inherit less). But their heirs also inherit the, say, Tesla shares, without inheriting the "unrealised gain". This means that all that tax that was not paid by Elon or Jeff or whoever will never be paid.
One of the reasons I did this was that I'd met a girl called Sasha at a nightclub called Infernos and we had started dating. I had told her I worked in chemicals, she said she worked in films. About four dates in I confessed I did tax returns for companies in the chemical industry, and she confessed she was about to complete a training contract at one of the Big 4 accountancy firms, but she "audited a lot of film companies".
In fact, in the ten years since their dressing down by MPs, Starbucks UK has managed to make a net loss of an average £10 million per year.
You would think that such a failing business would be shut down by its shareholders, seeing how catastrophically it's haemorrhaging money.
But in the same time period it has paid out an average £25 million per year in royalty fees (to itself).
The funny thing is, the UK could stop this shifting of profits via royalty payments any time it wanted to, by using something called a withholding tax. A withholding tax is a mechanism that automatically requires a tax payment whenever things like royalties or interest get paid overseas....... I rather admired those countries, like Australia and the USA, that did have one - ifan Australian Starbucks tried to pay a royalty fee to a Dutch Starbucks, the Australian Taxation Office could say, "That's fine, mate, but pay some tax on that fee" and consequently it makes less sense to shift Australian profits offshore as they get taxed when they leave.
I peered through the narrow strip of glass in the door to the conference room, at the growling bear pit of management consultants.....These were people who thrived on competition, on one-upmanship, on showcasing their intelligence. They were all well-dressed and confident, and ready to pounce on weakness.
I needed to look like I was gliding along, a serene swan in the deep end of a bear pit. The class started in five minutes.
I vomited.
In other words, if you bought one of the flats on a lower floor, say for amere €100 million, and sold it for €120 million to another Brit, who then died, a total of over £80 million would be paid to the taxman.
+
I'm not saying that I agree that these taxes should be this high, or that Idisagree with them (though they are a slight rebuke to peoplewho say we don't tax property enough). Instead, this is the bit that blows my mind.
As the flats were purchased by foreign investors, using offshore companies (or, even better, multiple offshore companies), in reality the total tax payable would be the original stamp tax only - so €15 million, rather than £80 million. This suggests that in just one block of flats in London the government may have lost out on hundreds of millions in avoided taxes.
Just one block!
Politicians can't write the rules themselves, so they get accountants to help. But it's in the interest of both the accountants and the government to keep everything complicated. The accountants keep their fees (and their loopholes) and the politicians get to keep their donations from special-interest groups and to keep raising taxes without the electorate understanding what they're doing.”
So what’s my overall take on the book. I really liked it and enjoyed reading it. Though admit that, like the author, I was slightly depressed by the unfairness he points to in the tax system, Admittedly, it’s mainly about the British tax system, but most of the rorts described are also employed in Australia. I think it should be getting more attention than being in the remainder basket at the bookshop. Five stars from me.
He has a throw-away line in there where he says that over a lifetime “About half your wealth will disappear as tax”. And the really disturbing thing is that most of the loopholes are blatantly obvious and people are not breaking the law by using them.
He writes very well...and amusingly. Certainly got me in......and that’s no mean feat to write an entertaining and interesting book about tax.
I have an English, accountant friend, who lives and works in Australia and I’m wondering if he has read it yet because I think he would be interested. ...The author spent some time in Australia and has a number of examples of Australian practice.
One of the take-aways is that it seems most of the tax rorts are enabled by treating companies differently to individuals when it comes to tax. And if I understand the author correctly, he is suggesting that this should be changed so that it’s no longer advantageous for your wholly owned company in Jersey to purchase a house (or car, or school fees) and then allow you to use it or rent it or take out a loan. ...But maybe I need to re-read his ideas on this.
Here are a few snippets that caught my attention as I was reading:
“This is what unsettled me when I saw the light-hearted sketch of the accountant who rebels with a bit of clandestine rounding - out there in the real world, accountants are cheating the system to ensure that their clients, people with serious money, are paying a lot less tax than they should be. And as a consequence of these rebel accountants, not only are schools and hospitals and roads and the rest receiving a lot less money, but you are paying a lot more tax than you need to be. That's not quite as funny.
Except the maddening thing is that most accountants don't even need to be rebels. Most of the time the rules don't need circumventing or manipulating, because the rules have been written under the guidance of those people with very serious money.
About half your wealth will disappear as tax over the course of your life - a little less if you're Australian or American, a little more if you're European. You'll probably spend more on tax than you will on all the homes you'll live in, the cars you'll drive and the food you'll eat combined, but I'll bet you find it easier to read a nutrition label than the deductions coming out of your payslip. I bet you know more about whether a neighbourhood is a nice one to live in than you are able to figure out how much tax you'll pay to live there.
You're not meant to know about tax. It's kept complex for a reason.
Ifyou knew what was really going on, you'd be the one who would want to rebel. If you understood that you were paying perhaps four times the tax rate of multi-millionaires, and more in absolute terms than some billionaires, would you stand for it?
This means that if you earned £20,000 a year renting out your Hong Kong apartment, you would have to pay UK tax on that rent, but if you earned £2,000,000 a year renting out an entire Hong Kong apartment block you would just hand over a £30,000 fee each year to pay no UK tax at all (which is a bargain, when the tax on the income from that apartment block would have been around €900,000 per year).
This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that our tax laws are
specifically designed to reward the wealthy.
Now imagine you'd inherited a huge amount of (mostly offshore) wealth. Actually I don't quite mean that. I mean you didn't inherit the wealth, but an offshore trust did of which you are a named beneficiary.
Were you just a normal Brit without an offshore trust you would declare your worldwide income on your tax return and find yourself with a tax bill that took away almost half your income.
How beastly.
To avoid this frightful state of affairs you could make a visit to
someone like Wilhelm.
If you join the 1 per cent you might have a slightly bigger house in a smarter neighbourhood You might have a nanny and send your kids to private school, but fundamentally your day-to-day won't be much different than if you're in the top 50 per cent. But get into the top 0.01 per cent and normal everyday chores evaporate. I knew one client who paid €4,000 a week for a concierge service, which she only used for booking restaurants and, on one occasion, ordering some new towels (because she didn't know how else to buy towels).
The top 0.01 per cent doesn't trip off the tongue so well, but there are still a good six or seven thousand people in this 0.01 per cent in the UK alone. That's a lot of potential clients.
But the one big capital purchase we're all likely to make in our lives that actually loses money - our car - is exempt from capital gains tax...... So if you buy a car to, you know, drive it, the car will lose its value and you get no benefit from that loss. But if you buy a car as an investment, and stick it in your climate-controlled garage alongside your McLaren F1 ($19.8 million) or Ferrari 250 ($78 million) or 1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SLR Coupe (a record-breaking €135 million), you can sell it at a profit and not pay any tax at all.
One of the easiest ways for the really ridiculously wealthy to avoid paying taxes is to use the wealth they already have as collateral and borrow money instead.
Elon Musk, for instance, is said to have never accepted a pay cheque from Tesla - though he was offered minimum wage (for legal reasons.
And yet, he's still doing all right. If he finds himself needing a bit of cash, he can borrow it. Borrowing money doesn't make you richer - you still owe the bank, after all - but it does mean that you now have cash in your pocket, and still own all your Tesla shares.
You read that right. Elon can get cash to buy things without earning anything at all. And where there are no earnings, there's no tax.
The "Die" part of "Buy, Borrow, Die" goes like this: when a billionaire dies, the borrowed money reduces their taxable estate, so their heirs pay less tax too (though also inherit less). But their heirs also inherit the, say, Tesla shares, without inheriting the "unrealised gain". This means that all that tax that was not paid by Elon or Jeff or whoever will never be paid.
One of the reasons I did this was that I'd met a girl called Sasha at a nightclub called Infernos and we had started dating. I had told her I worked in chemicals, she said she worked in films. About four dates in I confessed I did tax returns for companies in the chemical industry, and she confessed she was about to complete a training contract at one of the Big 4 accountancy firms, but she "audited a lot of film companies".
In fact, in the ten years since their dressing down by MPs, Starbucks UK has managed to make a net loss of an average £10 million per year.
You would think that such a failing business would be shut down by its shareholders, seeing how catastrophically it's haemorrhaging money.
But in the same time period it has paid out an average £25 million per year in royalty fees (to itself).
The funny thing is, the UK could stop this shifting of profits via royalty payments any time it wanted to, by using something called a withholding tax. A withholding tax is a mechanism that automatically requires a tax payment whenever things like royalties or interest get paid overseas....... I rather admired those countries, like Australia and the USA, that did have one - ifan Australian Starbucks tried to pay a royalty fee to a Dutch Starbucks, the Australian Taxation Office could say, "That's fine, mate, but pay some tax on that fee" and consequently it makes less sense to shift Australian profits offshore as they get taxed when they leave.
I peered through the narrow strip of glass in the door to the conference room, at the growling bear pit of management consultants.....These were people who thrived on competition, on one-upmanship, on showcasing their intelligence. They were all well-dressed and confident, and ready to pounce on weakness.
I needed to look like I was gliding along, a serene swan in the deep end of a bear pit. The class started in five minutes.
I vomited.
In other words, if you bought one of the flats on a lower floor, say for amere €100 million, and sold it for €120 million to another Brit, who then died, a total of over £80 million would be paid to the taxman.
+
I'm not saying that I agree that these taxes should be this high, or that Idisagree with them (though they are a slight rebuke to peoplewho say we don't tax property enough). Instead, this is the bit that blows my mind.
As the flats were purchased by foreign investors, using offshore companies (or, even better, multiple offshore companies), in reality the total tax payable would be the original stamp tax only - so €15 million, rather than £80 million. This suggests that in just one block of flats in London the government may have lost out on hundreds of millions in avoided taxes.
Just one block!
Politicians can't write the rules themselves, so they get accountants to help. But it's in the interest of both the accountants and the government to keep everything complicated. The accountants keep their fees (and their loopholes) and the politicians get to keep their donations from special-interest groups and to keep raising taxes without the electorate understanding what they're doing.”
So what’s my overall take on the book. I really liked it and enjoyed reading it. Though admit that, like the author, I was slightly depressed by the unfairness he points to in the tax system, Admittedly, it’s mainly about the British tax system, but most of the rorts described are also employed in Australia. I think it should be getting more attention than being in the remainder basket at the bookshop. Five stars from me.
July 21, 2024
If you get over the slightly cringey style and his witticisms, it’s a fantastic book. I couldn’t put it down. Very digestible and easy to read.
July 4, 2024
Very entertaining. Sincerely hope that the Rebel Accountant would consider comedy as his next profession. Full of truthful observations about what a career in tax advice entails (which I can attest in light of my brief stint in tax).
July 16, 2024
Interesting book on tax systems and how if your rich enough you pay less tax as well as plenty of this isn't fair moments.
Couple of high profile cases were mentioned, as well as how much tax isn't being collected that could be put to use funding the NHS etc.
"You can get richer by buying a yacht, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do."
Couple of high profile cases were mentioned, as well as how much tax isn't being collected that could be put to use funding the NHS etc.
"You can get richer by buying a yacht, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump and the Duke of Westminster often pay less tax than you do."
September 13, 2024
Quite enlightening, in a way that shows in detail how many of the sayings about "they pay no taxes" are actually true, and how they work. Worldwide tax systems are overly complicated and extremely inefficient, which tends to harm the individual consumer disproportionately. Also, I was reminded that I was due a big chunk of tax returns from HMRC, so that's alright!
February 26, 2024
Loving the book.
Incredibly informative, humorous and the author has a real skill at making a rather dull topic interesting. Fortunately it is relevant to my job so I am already dull and interested in tax but even the lay person would enjoy I feel. The author sensibly hits upon some high profile celebrities and big well, known companies to highlight their tax scandals and how it worked which makes for good reading and nice to drop into conversation.
Author clearly exceptionally bright but also very witty. Will be sad for the book to end.
Incredibly informative, humorous and the author has a real skill at making a rather dull topic interesting. Fortunately it is relevant to my job so I am already dull and interested in tax but even the lay person would enjoy I feel. The author sensibly hits upon some high profile celebrities and big well, known companies to highlight their tax scandals and how it worked which makes for good reading and nice to drop into conversation.
Author clearly exceptionally bright but also very witty. Will be sad for the book to end.
May 14, 2024
Very interesting
August 13, 2024
Tax, something that in all honesty really bores me. But The Rebel Accountant somehow makes the subject come alive.
It's also semi-biographical and details how he became an accountant and all the tricks of the trade. Before detailing some of the schemes the rich and powerful use to avoid paying tax. Really pleasantly surprised by this book
It's also semi-biographical and details how he became an accountant and all the tricks of the trade. Before detailing some of the schemes the rich and powerful use to avoid paying tax. Really pleasantly surprised by this book
December 2, 2023
The author tries to position this book at a common reader, but frankly I think accountants get the most out of this book. I really enjoyed the factual aspects and the researched stories. But the end bit of recommendations for improvements of the tax system is just wishful thinking. I did feel like the book really bagged the profession, which for those of us who act ethically and try do best by our clients and the system, is grossly unfair.
January 22, 2024
I didn't think a book on tax could be interesting... or funny.
This was highly enjoyable and explains tax law and loopholes in an easy to understand way, while telling interesting anecdotes, interspersed with jokes.
Highly recommend.
This was highly enjoyable and explains tax law and loopholes in an easy to understand way, while telling interesting anecdotes, interspersed with jokes.
Highly recommend.
April 8, 2023
A book about tax, but it's both disturbing and funny. This one was hard to put down until complete. The final chapter is certainly a system I would vote for. Rebel Accountant for Minister of Finance!
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