Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, spoke to Sky News about the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion and argued that Labour's recent outrage over avoidance is purely political.
Avoidance, evasion, and tax tyranny - Dr Eamonn Butler writes for Conservative Home
Director of the Adam Smith Institute Dr Eamonn Butler wrote an op-ed for Conservative Home about the difference between tax avoidance (legal) and tax evasion (illegal) and argued that Labour's recent hysteria over tax avoidance is just playing at politics:
At Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday, Ed Miliband banged on (again) about tax avoidance. And in the Opposition Day Debate on the same subject, Ed Balls spelled out his party’s plans to ‘introduce tougher penalties for those who are caught avoiding tax’. Pardon? Did you say penalties? For what? Tax avoidance – organising your affairs, within the tax rules, such that you pay less tax – is perfectly legal (or at least, it should be…but read on). It is tax evasion – concealing or under-declaring your income or taxable assets so as to escape tax – that is, rightly, illegal.However, in their werewolf greed (to use Marx’s colourful description of capitalists) to maximise the revenue of a government that now consumes nearly half the national income and then borrows still more, our politicians have deliberately conflated the two. Which allows them glibly to talk about ‘penalties’ for something that is perfectly legal, but which they don’t much like. Staying within the law, but structuring your affairs so as to pay less tax than you might otherwise do, is portrayed as no less reprehensible as criminally deceiving the tax authorities. We’re all in this together, after all, and the government needs the money. So now, thanks to this sleight-of-hand (of which George Osborne is just as guilty), penalties appropriate to the criminal activity are being subtly extended into the legal activity. Indeed, without any real debate on the subject, they have already been extended far beyond the Rule of Law.
ASI paper "The Real Problem was Nominal" features on The Economist's blog
New ASI paper "The Real Problem was Nominal - the crash of 2008" was featured on The Economist's blog, which looked at how British data would fare in the 'musical chairs' model:
SCOTT SUMNER has written a paper for the Adam Smith Institute in which he sets out the market monetarist interpretation of the great recession. Central to this is the "musical chairs" model of unemployment, which he assesses against American labour market data.The musical chairs model says that shocks to nominal GDP—or total spending in the economy—drive unemployment. When nominal GDP falls, there is no longer enough spending to sustain the same number of jobs unless wages fall. Because wages are slow to adjust, unemployment rises instead.
“The Real Problem was Nominal” - written by Prof Scott Sumner, a leading economist who was a key inspiration for the Federal Reserve’s QE3 programme - explains how the European Central Bank is repeating the mistakes that the Fed and Bank of England made in the 2008 crisis—trying to plan credit and micromanage the financial sector, when the real issue is excessively tight monetary policy.
The paper argues that Eurozone quantitative easing will not reverse the Eurozone’s decline unless it is open-ended and tied more explicitly to the ECB’s inflation target. Targeting nominal GDP—the total amount of spending in the economy, also known as aggregate demand—would be even better, the paper argues, guaranteeing more stability when unexpected supply-side shocks like oil price movements make inflation targeting trickier.
Dr Eamonn Butler's comments on record-high pension deficits feature in The Telegraph
Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, highlights the problems with regulating pension funds in The Telegraph.
Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, said: "Regulation of pension funds has meant that their decisions are often nothing to do with finding returns, but instead driven by an overbearing system of rules and red tape."
ASI paper "The Real Problem was Nominal" released as an exclusive with The Daily Telegraph
New ASI paper "The Real Problem was Nominal" was released as an exclusive with The Daily Telegraph. "The Real Problem was Nominal" - written by Prof Scott Sumner, a leading economist who was a key inspiration for the Federal Reserve's QE3 programme - explains how the European Central Bank is repeating the mistakes that the Fed and Bank of England made in the 2008 crisis—trying to plan credit and micromanage the financial sector, when the real issue is excessively tight monetary policy.
The paper argues that Eurozone quantitative easing will not reverse the Eurozone’s decline unless it is open-ended and tied more explicitly to the ECB's inflation target. Targeting nominal GDP—the total amount of spending in the economy, also known as aggregate demand—would be even better, the paper argues, guaranteeing more stability when unexpected supply-side shocks like oil price movements make inflation targeting trickier.
From The Daily Telegraph:
In his paper “The Real Problem Was Nominal”, Mr Sumner finds that tight monetary policy by the Bank and Fed worsened the Great Recession, and is now responsible for the protracted eurozone crisis.
He now recommended that the ECB eases its policy further to achieve its targets, ensuring stability for households and firms.
The central bank should go a step further by target the price level, rather than inflation, so that entrepreneurs can be sure that if the ECB misses its targets this will be compensated for in future.
An ever better option for the ECB to drop its inflation target in favour of a regime of nominal GDP (NGDP) level targeting, requiring policymakers to maintain the growth of total spending in the economy.
Such a system would have prevented the ECB from increasing its interest rates in 2011 when inflation rose because of VAT increases. Tighter policy caused the eurozone crisis to flare up again, from which the bloc has not fully recovered.
Lars Christensen, a senior fellow at the ASI, said: “The ECB needs to end the deflationary policies and hoc credit policies and instead introduce a clear and transparent rule-based monetary policy regime - an NGDP target.”
"This would save the Eurozone from the debt-deflation spiral and would at the same time greatly increase financial stability across Europe,” he added.
Author of the report, Professor Scott Sumner, also wrote an op-ed for The Daily Telegraph:
First, let’s clear up a few misconceptions. The recent eurozone recession was not caused by the “zero interest rate” problem. Some economists argue that central banks cannot stimulate demand when their policy rate is very close to zero, as the Bank of England’s has been for close to six years.
But even if this can be a problem, it could not have been between 2007 and 2012, when eurozone interest rates were not at zero. They were consistently above this level and the European Central Bank (ECB) was doing “normal” monetary policy, raising and lowering interest rates to keep inflation on target.
If the eurozone had a shortfall in demand then – and it most certainly did – it’s because the ECB intentionally created it to keep inflation under 2pc. In retrospect, it was a mistake to give the ECB an inflexible inflation target. For instance, when eurozone countries adopted fiscal austerity and raised VAT rates, the ECB decided – in 2011 – to tighten monetary policy to prevent inflation from running above 2pc.
Press Release: Eurozone QE is not enough for recovery, says US economist behind QE3
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Communications Manager Kate Andrews: kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778207 Eurozone quantitative easing (QE) will not reverse the Eurozone’s decline unless it is open-ended and tied more explicitly to the European Central Bank (ECB)'s inflation target, according to a new paper from the Adam Smith Institute.
The paper, “The Real Problem Was Nominal”, written by Prof Scott Sumner, a leading economist who was a key inspiration for the Federal Reserve's QE3 programme, argues that the ECB is repeating the mistakes that the Fed and Bank of England made in the 2008 crisis—trying to plan credit and micromanage the financial sector, when the real issue is excessively tight monetary policy.
Instead of trying to micromanage the economy by using credit policy – lending to governments and banks – the ECB simply needs to do ease policy enough to achieve its inflation target, so that firms and households can create wealth in a stable macroeconomic environment.
Targeting nominal GDP—the total amount of spending in the economy, also known as aggregate demand—would be even better, the paper argues, guaranteeing more stability when unexpected supply-side shocks like oil price movements make inflation targeting trickier.
Such a policy would automatically generate more inflation during recessions, to stabilise the macroeconomy, and less inflation during booms, to prevent excess price rises.
The paper debunks the existing analysis of the 2008 financial crisis by illustrating that interest rates are a poor measure of the stance of monetary policy, so just because the ECB has dropped rates to zero does not mean its monetary policy is 'easy'.
It uses historical data to show that tight money policies by the BoE and the Fed hugely worsened the Great Recession, and is now stopping Europe from recovering. It also shows that monetary policy and fiscal policy work through the same channels of aggregate demand and inflation, explaining why austerity in the UK and US has not hurt economic growth.
The paper calls on the ECB to replace the one-sided inflation target with a target for total incomes, to stop debt crises and automatically incorporate supply-shocks rather than relying on the judgement of ECB officials. This should be based on a target of the market forecast, whether of total nominal income, or of inflation. The bank should also stop doing credit policy, which distorts specific markets without solving the monetary disequilibrium that is the heart of the problem.
Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute Lars Christensen said:
More and more Eurozone countries are now facing outright deflation and there is no doubt that the ECB's overly tight monetary stance is primarily to blame for this.
Therefore there is a serious need for reform of the ECB's policy instruments and targets.
The ECB needs to end the deflationary policies and hoc credit policies and instead introduce a clear and transparent rule-based monetary policy regime—a nominal GDP target.
An NGDP target would save the Eurozone from the debt-deflation spiral and would at the same time greatly increase financial stability across Europe.
Director of the Adam Smith Institute Dr Eamonn Butler added:
Central banks are always over-tightening or over-loosening things. They created a huge bubble that ultimately ended in the financial crash. Now they are plunging countries into damaging deflations.
Central banks should be abolished and interest rates left to the market. As a second best, we need strict rule-based targeting, such as Professor Sumner proposes.
Notes to editors:
Download a free copy of "The Real Problem was Nominal" here.
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Communications Manager, at kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778207.
The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.
Kate Andrews argues against compulsory voting on BBC The Big Questions
Communications Manager at the Adam Smith Institute, Kate Andrews, appeared on BBC One's The Big Questions to debate whether democracy would be made better if voting were mandatory. Watch the programme here. (Compulsory voting segment starts 21:04)
"Should Samantha Cameron give up her day job?" - Dr Eamonn Butler argues no in The Observer
Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, took part in The Observer's weekly debate, arguing that Samantha Cameron should not resign from her position at Smythson, regardless of her husband's position on tax avoidance. Eamonn exchanged e-mails with Heather Stewart, The Observer’s economics editor, who argued that she should step down.
Eamonn's first response:
Stop beating up innocent people. David Cameron is not his wife’s custodian, nor she his. She should be commended for going out and getting a job, where she at least might pick up some understanding of the issues facing business and the everyday tribulations of people in work – useful, given how insulated our politicians are. She is an employee, a creative adviser, not one of the bosses who makes decisions about her employer’s finances. No doubt if she worked on the checkout in Tesco you’d be telling her to resign over the company’s financial fraud investigation or the moans about how it treats its suppliers. Smells like pure politics. Focus on the real issue. What’s wrong here is our high and complicated taxes that drive firms to base themselves abroad. It’s a free world and that’s perfectly legal, but who can blame them?
Ben Southwood argues against increasing inheritance tax on BBC Radio Scotland
Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, Ben Southwood, argued that increasing inheritance tax would do little to improve social mobility on BBC Radio Scotland. Listen to the full interview here. (Starts 1:46:17)
ASI Senior Fellow Tim Worstall discusses the profit motivation in recycling on BBC World Service
Senior Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, Tim Worstall, speaks to BBC World Service about the what profits can be made from recycling. Listen to the interview here. (Starts 12:57)