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Since Richard Murphy is citing his 2014 blog on declining corporation tax receipts, let's see how good it looks in retrospect. (Spoiler: not very good)
Murphy looked at large and small company corporation tax receipts and constructed this chart, extrapolating present trends forward. Note how dependent the trendline is on the high 2000 large company yield (in reality a one-off benefit from the change to instalment payments).
How good did the extrapolation turn out to be?
I've added the actual CT revenues onto his chart (light blue is large companies, orange small companies).
I've added the actual CT revenues onto his chart (light blue is large companies, orange small companies).
I'd tentatively suggest Richard revisit his 2014 predictions, and be cautious about citing them now.
The full chart of actual numbers is here.
The HMRC data is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/816285/Table11_1AJul19.pdf
I see Murphy is now responding saying I used a different dataset.
But it's exactly the same dataset, just five years later.
He also tries to claim that all the growth in CT has been in the financial sector, when the same source he used shows that's not right (and even the financial sector CT growth looks more like a post-crisis recovery).
I probably shouldn't bother - Murphy is a pretty marginal figure these days. But he's still influential in some quarters, and this kind of complete disregard of the facts shows that he really shouldn't be.
