Alex Cobham

Spanish Prime Minister Sánchez challenges the EU #deregulation push

➡️ "cautions against reducing the competitiveness agenda to deregulation and quick fixes"

➡️ a “truly successful competitiveness strategy”, cannot sideline social cohesion or the Green Deal in the name of regulatory simplification"

Israel launches huge strikes against south Beirut after mass evacuation order Residents fled Lebanese capital in panic before assaults on claimed Hezbollah targets while Tehran continues to launch retaliatory attacks

Forcing half a million people to leave their homes and then destroying their homes is ethnic cleansing.

Why are you just sat here watching?
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

All countries now face a direct threat to their taxing rights - including OECD members who have so far tried to hide just how much revenue they have quietly given up.

The only answer is a collective defence of tax sovereignty, through the UN convention negotiations

taxjustice.net/reports/the-...

Screenshot from South Africa's Budget Review 2026 (p.40): CORPORATE INCOME TAX Global minimum tax update In 2026/27, government will implement the updated global minimum tax rules. The rules are expected to reduce profit shifting by multinational corporations by reducing opportunities to take advantage of negligible or zero tax rates in other countries. Using the most recent data on companies’ operations, and taking into account the OECD’s updated rules following negotiations between member states, tax revenues of R2 billion are estimated as a result of this reform in 2026/27. This compares to the previous estimate of R8 billion.

The UK followed Netherlands in revealing the 'side by side' deal - exempting US multinationals from key elements of the global minimum tax - has lost it 25% of expected revenue.

Now South Africa has announced a revenue reduction of *75%*.
h/t @icrict.bsky.social www.treasury.gov.za/documents/Na...

People who are not tax resident in the UK should not be allowed to donate to UK political parties.

Companies should not be allowed to donate to UK political parties.

No one should be allowed to use crypto to donate to UK political parties.

As Italy approves a decree to reimburse gas plants for carbon costs and gas prices jump 80%, it’s worth recalling that in 2018 both Italian and Spanish power prices were tightly linked to gas. Since then, Spain has largely decoupled, mainly thanks to renewables. Italy hasn’t.

Screenshot of Financial Times: "Middle East war | Wealthy Dubai residents race back to UAE to avoid tax bills Some risk spending too few days in the emirate and too many in the UK" Illustration: stock photo of man in white shirt speaking on mobile phone while waiting to cross road in front of skyscrapers

Life's all about priorities.

ACTUALLY it is more likely than I thought that I am followed On Here by prospective PhD students, because the market isn't just kids it is people who (like me) did a PhD later in life. Fed up with practice or NGO work or whatever? Do a PhD with me!!

Seems vanishingly unlikely that I am followed On Here by prospective PhD students but ... look! you can do a PhD with me as your supervisor: www.lboro.ac.uk/study/postgr...

“The key idea is that instead of public revenue being raised by taxing income from labour or economic activity [it should be] raised by taxing wealth.”

🔗 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

"When we talk about #WomensRights, we are talking about them - when we talk about #TaxJustice, we are talking about changing the conditions that shape our entire lives." - Carolina Finette on the women who raised her in Brazil & the fiscal policies shaping women’s lives. bit.ly/4l6upux

Especially as it was reported at the time that the source of the story was a PR company working on behalf of a wealth management firm.

Telegraph declines to tell regulator how fake banker story got published The Telegraph has refused to tell IPSO how an article about a made-up banker supposedly hit by school fee rises came to be published.

Extraordinary that the Telegraph is refusing to tell Ipso how its story about imaginary couple Al and Alexandra Moy and their non-existent children Ali, Harry and Barry got published.

One major story slipped out with today's OBR Forecast, and without any public comment:

🌎A global tax carve-out for US multinationals, pushed by the UK and G7 to appease the US, is expected to let corporate giants off over £2bn of tax by 2028/29. That's £700m a year

🧵/1

👀👇

"When the state is growing weak, the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity." -- Rousseau, Social Contract, 2.5

Mark Ruffalo: "Tax the rich... They can handle it, trust me."

Fiscal consolidation lowers real output, raises the unemployment rate and increase income inequality. Contractionary effects stronger during recessions; supports the Keynesian view that periods of weakness are not suitable for consolidation efforts. Blog summary of our research:

An incredible retraction by the Daily Telegraph today. They have apologised for publishing an article last year headlined: “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t afford to go on five holidays.” The entire story was fabricated; the family did not exist.

a thing historians will marvel about when they study this era is the extent to which the "war is a thing that happens to poorer, browner people" class went about systematically dismantling every aspect of the global political order that confined the costs of war to poorer and browner people

🚨 The International Foreign Bribery Taskforce led by the FBI & partners in Australia, Canada, New Zealand & the UK, has adopted the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index & Corporate Tax Haven Index for corruption risk assessments in cross-border investigations. bit.ly/4aLZMav

I wonder how many of the wealthy westerners fleeing the gulf are leaving migrant worker maids, nannies, drivers and other staff behind.

1/7🧵 New paper "Too Much Finance Redux" with Jean-Louis Arcand and Enrico Berkes — a follow-up to over a decade of work on whether financial deepening can go too far. Here's the story: @gvagrad.bsky.social

Nurul Amin Shah Alam, Blind Rohingya refugee dumped by CBP, dies in cold "They just left him."

"He cannot use a phone. He doesn’t know his address, he doesn’t know phone numbers, he can’t communicate, he can’t see. And they just left him.”

UK government approach to migration is curbing the economically active and ramping up the proportion of those it denies the right to work. Not hard to imagine this might eventually reverse the fact that migrants contribute more in taxes, and receive less in benefits. Would *that* be a success?

The Craft of a Sustainable Economy, Part 2 How did the wealth inequality that now plagues the U.S. get so bad?

If you still think the billionaire class and the super rich earned their money fairly and squarely, you would be wrong. The U.S. tax code did most of the work for them,

Read what else Patriotic Millionaire Todd Oppenheimer had to say here: craftsmanship.substack.com/p/the-craft-...

Economic inequity hasn’t occurred because the wealthy are any smarter than everyone else, or working any harder.

It was caused by a series of policy decisions that have steadily made life easier for the wealthy, and harder for most working people.

Joel Ryan, head start administrator: "WA low income households pay 13% in taxes while highest pay only 4%"

Says without funding from Millionaires Tax, there will be cuts to child care that supports working parents and keeps economy strong.

Ends by saying: "to my fellow millionaires, none of us built our wealth alone, we benefited from the system funded by tax payers. Taxes are the foundation of a society. Pass this bill" 🔥

#WALeg

Great thread on the effort to introduce a wealth tax in Washington