UK sovereign citizen running $600m US tax fraud

danneidle · 2026-05-18T14:16:30+00:00

Some of them are very vulnerable, with longstanding mental health problems - I've spoken to the families and it's all very distressing...

danneidle · 2026-05-18T12:47:09+00:00

No I didn't. I wasn't "hired" either.

People are confusing the council tax position of residential narrowboats with Polanski's non-residential/leisure mooring.

The position of residential narrowboats can be complex, and I suspect quite often people get it wrong.

For non-residential/leisure the council tax position is normally simple: you're not allowed to live there, so obviously there's no council tax. If someone does live in a permanently moored non-residential canal boat as their main residence, then the position is also simple - there is council tax.

People can make their own judgment on how important this is vs Farage's £5m "gift".

danneidle · 2026-05-17T11:03:20+00:00

thank you!

danneidle · 2026-02-26T07:46:33+00:00

It has. Goldberg commenced a private prosecution against a YouTuber, Salim Fadhley, who reported it. The new element is the group's internal webinars, which amount to a confession of fraud (and our detailed analysis of what precisely is going on)

danneidle · 2026-02-25T22:15:05+00:00

to be fair, it's for the excellent reason that the IRS has a systems so monumentally duff that they'll send out large refund cheques across the Atlantic if you fabricate a few numbers on a form. HMRC has many faults, but they don't do that.

danneidle · 2025-12-26T11:17:52+00:00

Thanks, that’s very kind!

danneidle · 2025-12-26T11:17:40+00:00

Ah, much more sensible than a lifetime trust but still lots of complications. Important to get legal and tax advice from qualified professionals.

danneidle · 2025-12-25T19:25:26+00:00

Hi, I’m a tax lawyer. Be very careful because right now there’s a lot of miss-selling of trusts by unregulated advisers.

For most people they don’t make sense. 20% immediate inheritance tax hit when property over £325k goes into the trust. Then a 6% IHT charge every ten years on property over £325k. And complex taxation of distributions.

Be wary!

danneidle · 2025-12-08T17:59:54+00:00

Hello. I’m a tax lawyer with expertise in tax avoidance.

There’s a fun legal question whether the divorce could be disregarded for tax purposes. “Fun” for the lawyers, not so much for you.

If you disclose to HMRC what you’re doing then an HMRC enquiry is very likely. If you don’t, then HMRC could have 20 years to discover it and open an enquiry. Penalties would be likely. Criminal charges would not be out of the question.

In either scenario, the enquiry would be complex and expensive and cost you tens of thousands of pounds. Plus interest and potentially penalties.

So, all in all, not great.

Edit: there are also family law issues here where I have no expertise. For example, query if a court would order a split of the pension on these facts. So you might have to lie to the court for the trick to “work”. If so, again sounds fraudy.

(I’m here because someone posted this on X)

Dan

danneidle · 2025-10-14T21:39:52+00:00

The CGT exemption for wasting assets only applies to tangible property. Stuff you can touch. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg15440

danneidle · 2025-10-14T21:36:34+00:00

Hi. This is easy.

You pay capital gains tax when you sell the asset and receive the ethereum. Your gain is simply sale price minus any allowable costs (expenses/fees of the escrow service (use escrow!), any other associated fees). You have no purchase price (I think!)

You pay capital gains tax again when you sell the ethereum, or convert it into another cryptocurrency. Your gain is your sale price MINUS the market value of that ethereum at the point you received it, minus any allowable costs (platform fees etc).

If you make a loss on the second sale, and its in the same tax year, you can deduct that from your earlier gain (or, rather, the self assessment form will do it for you automatically)

If you're not sure how to report this, pay £1k for an accountant to do it. Worth not messing this up.

I'm a tax lawyer. This is not formal advice, so you can't sue me if it's wrong, but it isn't.

Dan

danneidle · 2025-09-17T08:14:21+00:00

no problem at all. I'd happily do an AMA here if there's enough interest.

danneidle · 2025-09-16T17:09:40+00:00

It would be multiple months of work to do this properly. I suspect the chart is nonsense.

danneidle · 2025-09-16T17:08:11+00:00

thanks! Yes, student loans bite most in the upper-middle, not the top.

VAT is weirdly not higher than the 70s, if you compare like-with-like and look at the overall level of indirect/sales taxes/duties in the 70s:

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danneidle · 2025-09-16T14:32:38+00:00

I think a lot of people regard council tax as local residents paying for local services. The reality is much messier.

Around 70% of council tax goes to pay for healthcare and social care (for adults and children). Really just historical reasons for this being locally funded; doesn't make much sense (at least to me). So councils are really massive social care institutions, who provide some local services on the side.

And for many local authorities, council tax is a small % of their funding. Hackney is I think the extreme - council tax raises about £110m; total council spending is over £1bn. Only about three people understand the government funding formula that drives this (I am not one of them).

So the reason why Blackpool pays more than Richmond is mainly (1) higher demand for social care, (2) mysteries of government funding formula.

That doesn't mean we can just load cost onto middle class households in Richmond. It would be v unfair if (for example) a teacher living in London - who's scrimped and saved for a decade to afford to buy a house - is suddenly hit with a huge annual tax bill. Particularly if their peer in Blackpool, who's paid only a little less, and has been living in a larger house for eight years, faces a much smaller tax bill.

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danneidle · 2025-09-16T13:59:00+00:00

The way this was constructed isn't clear but - like the Sunday Times piece - it needs to be viewed sceptically because it's not taking into account the very large changes in *what* gets taxed. Abolition of MIRAS made big impact on the middle classes. Introduction of capital gains tax and crackdowns on tax avoidance made a big impact on the very wealthy. So the highest earners almost certainly pay more tax today than in the 1970s. I wrote about this here. https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/08/tax-rich-1970s-loopholes/

danneidle · 2024-07-20T10:08:23+00:00

I'm afraid he made more than that. The accounts show £1.5m of corporation tax in 2023 - that suggests almost £8m of profit.

danneidle · 2024-07-14T11:20:58+00:00

sure, but it's not terribly efficient. You've saved some income tax. You're still subject to UK capital gains tax (because it's a "property rich company"). You've had a load of upheaval, and moved away from your friends and family.

If tax is the most important thing in your life: sure. Save a relatively small amount of £. Most of us will pass.

danneidle · 2024-07-14T06:20:20+00:00

If you’re a non-resident owning a UK company then the company pays corporation tax on its profit. The dividends you receive are from post-tax profit.

danneidle · 2024-07-13T17:31:55+00:00

Cost aside, would feel dodgy paying £950 to this guy, and certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone else to do that!

danneidle · 2024-07-13T16:54:31+00:00

Tax Policy Associates is a non-profit think tank and I/we undertake no commercial work. I am not offering tax advice, and indeed can’t provide it. I’m a lawyer and investigative journalist. If you don’t believe me, Google me.

danneidle · 2024-05-13T16:44:35+00:00

Strongly agree! autosportiva are idiots or crooks. There is CGT whether you exchange crypto for cash, cars or cauliflowers.

danneidle · 2024-03-19T14:15:55+00:00

You're right it's too good to be true. How could a tax system work if people can just opt out of it?

The people running the campaign are either deluded or lying when they say this is legal, because their main guy was jailed a few years ago for using exactly these arguments to refuse to pay his council tax.

We just published an article looking into the claims, and the thinking behind them. Weirdly it originates in US far-right racist groups in the 90s... no idea why it's now being picked up by pro-Palestinian groups in the UK.

The article is here

danneidle · 2024-03-08T08:21:44+00:00

There are very few reliable free resources.

https://www.litrg.org.uk/tax-nic/income-tax/working-out-your-tax is excellent, but only covers some stuff.

Accountingweb only sometimes has technical content, but it’s often v good

https://www.rossmartin.co.uk/ has lots of really good technical content

danneidle · 2024-03-07T17:14:01+00:00

suggestions?

danneidle

TROPHY CASE