Taxation
The insoluble link between government and crime
Taxes and prohibition invariably lead to evasion, racketeering and corruption in an endless capitalist cycle, says Mark Galeotti
In defence of BA’s new loyalty scheme
One of my favourite cartoons shows a couple sitting in luxury at the front of a plane, the wife peeking…
Portrait of the week: gambling politicians, gender rows and a free Julian Assange
Home The Conservative party withdrew its support from two parliamentary candidates, Craig Williams (who was parliamentary private secretary to the…
Down to grass roots
Thomas Piketty, the French economist who shot to fame for writing a colossal work of economics that many people bought…
The confusion at the heart of social care
Boris Johnson’s majority plunged to just 26 last night, following a rebellion over controversial changes to social care plans. Means-tested,…
Director’s cut: why do our taxes pay for loss-making films?
‘The role of government is not to pick favourites and subsidise them or protect them.’ So says the government’s industrial…
Interview: Meet Mariana Mazzucato, big-state capitalism’s new champion
‘It was Plato who said storytellers rule the world,’ observes Mariana Mazzucato, her powerful voice tempered with a beaming smile,…
Keynes’s big mistake
The one thing most people think they know about economics is wrong
John McDonnell’s true economic guru: the emperor Nero
John McDonnell, shadow chancellor in the Corbynite splinter-group, has announced that £120 billion is waiting to be reclaimed from tax…
Cicero on Labour taxes
Heidi Alexander, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow health secretary, has emphasised how important it is ‘to weave into [Labour’s] language, our narrative…
The clock that stopped: the victory of nuclear arms and defeat of nuclear power
‘I visited the black marble obelisk which marks the epicentre of the explosion, and I saw the plain domestic wall-clock…
Letters
Sugar added tax Sir: Julia Pickles (Letters, 14 June) suggests a sugar tax to combat the obesity epidemic and discourage…
Apollodorus on tax avoidance
The taxman will soon be ordering those planning dodgy tax avoidance schemes to declare them beforehand and pay the full…
Highland swing
Danny Alexander, the coalition’s senior Scot, on cricket,on his battle for Britain and his colleague George Osborne
Ancient Greek wealth taxes
After 685 tightly argued pages, the ‘superstar’ economist Thomas Piketty unfolds his master-plan for closing the gap between the rich…
Why picking holes in Piketty might help stop Miliband’s mansion tax
The postman at the door is stooped by his burden like an allegorical statue of Labour Oppressed by Capital. His…
Sochi’s spotlight reveals the rottenness at the heart of the Russian body politic
Imagine if the BBC’s excitable commentators had been asked to cover the building of Sochi’s facilities, rather than the Winter…
Investment: Bargains for bravehearts
An investor’s guide to the Scottish referendum
Investment: A plague on our houses
Mansion taxes may be inevitable – and will make us all poorer
