Starbucks’ supposed losses have made the FT this time, with a jokey article which nevertheless manages to miss the point. Good for Starbucks. The tax system is a bad joke. The more people who run rings round it, the more people will notice. One can only hope that eventually the penny will drop and real reforms will be put in place. The taxation of individuals and corporations is wrong in principle....

Anti-tax avoidance campaigner Richard Murphy has got the American coffee chain Starbucks in his sights this time. But as usual he does not tell the whole story and nor does he draw the obvious conclusions – shift taxes onto fixed property. Why can’t Murphy see this? Is he serious?

The times get stranger. I received an email yesterday from Vince Cable asking me to campaign for fairer taxes and to sign an on-line petition for his pet project, the Mansion Tax, now suggested for properties valued at £2 million or more. Cable claims it is impossible to avoid. I could think of a couple of ways off the top of my head. I am sure a lot of people could think of more if they put their...

Thomas Picketty, in his new book “Capital in the 21st century”, has stimulated public discussion on the need for an international wealth tax to remedy growing inequality. He could not be more mistaken. Although so-called wealth taxes are in operation abroad, the proposal is unworkable since it fails at the first hurdle – that of definition. What is wealth? Does it include pictures...

The economic mess that Ireland has got itself into is, as is well-known, a consequence of the credit-fuelled property boom. It was further boosted by infrastructure development funded by the EU, which would have been beneficial if only there had there been an effective land value capture mechanism is place. Instead, the Irish government abolished residential property taxes, thereby pumping up the...

Concern about economic injustice needs to be tempered with a sound understanding of the causes. If it is not, you get proposals for nonsensical ideas such as global wealth taxes, currently the subject of a petition under the umbrella of change.org. How would a global wealth tax work? Who would get the revenue? How would wealth even be defined? Would it include, for example, jewellery in bedside...

Not quite. But the Olympics and the holiday season have squeezed out most news about politics and economics. The troubles with the Euro continue to bubble away in the background, with periodic announcements that it has been “saved”. These have led to short bursts of confidence until the markets have, on reflection, realised that the problems remain unresolved. And so they will. The Euro...

The UK already has LVT now, in the form of Council Tax and the UBR. We are simply arguing that, to start with, the present system, which is messy and inefficient, needs to be tidied up. Why does everyone make such heavy weather of this, including LVT supporters?

Sales of luxury homes in London have dropped following the stamp duty changes in March. The expected increases in revenue are not materialising. Sales of homes worth more than £2m – the threshold at which the levy rises from 5 to 7 per cent – are down by 24 per cent in the four months since the budget. Sales which would have been at £2m and a bit have now been renegotiated to a bit under,...

The Private Member’s Bill tabled by Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion was due to have been debated on 1 March but for some reason was not. It is now scheduled for debate on Friday 26 April. The wording of the Bill is to “require the Secretary of State to commission a programme of research into the merits of replacing the Council Tax and Non-domestic rates in England...