Director @CenTaxUK and Associate Prof @LSELaw. Trying to make tax understandable and help design a better tax system. Fellow @LSEInequalities and @TheIFS
Joined July 2011
- Tweets 1,166
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- Followers 3,258
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122 Photos and videos
Andy Summers retweeted
7 Nov 2025
Several MPs raised questions on Tuesday with Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury @Dan4Barnet about potential adjustments to planned Inheritance Tax reforms, including a ‘Minimum Share Rule’, which we modelled in our recent report:
centax.org.uk/policy-brief-t…
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Andy Summers retweeted
5 Nov 2025
Important paper.
Our tax system is such a mess that there's broad agreement from the @ASI to the @NEF on how to make it fairer, simpler, and more efficient.
If Reeves did this at the Budget, she'd go down as one of our greatest Chancellors.
centax.org.uk/tax-reforms-fo…
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Andy Summers retweeted
5 Nov 2025
🚨 NEW🚨
We’re really excited to launch ‘Tax Reforms for Growth’ today along with experts from across the political spectrum.
Consensus on tax policy is rare, but we have a joint plan for fair, pro-growth tax reform in the UK🧵
centax.org.uk/tax-reforms-fo…
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Andy Summers retweeted
5 Nov 2025
Everyone's talking about tax rises - but what about tax fixes? In a pretty unusual intervention, @CPSThinkTank has teamed up with @CenTaxUK, @ASI, @IPPR, @NEF, @jrf_uk, @WeAreBrightBlue, @LabourTogether & @DanNeidle to argue for sweeping, pro-growth tax reform & simplification.
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Andy Summers retweeted
6 Oct 2025
'Can we design a tax system which taxes wealth and capital fairly and is pro-growth?' with @CIOTNews
🕐 1pm, today (Monday)
📍Exchange 10, Manchester Central
👉 @johnbarnettcta
👉 @JohnGlenUK
👉 @Summers_AD
👉 Chair: Nichola Ross Martin
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Join us Monday at 1pm for our CIOT/@CenTaxUK #CPC25 debate:
Can we design a tax system which taxes wealth and capital fairly and is pro-growth?
With @JohnGlenUK, @Summers_AD, @johnbarnettcta and Nichola Ross Martin
Exchange 10, Manchester Central (conf pass needed). Buffet lunch
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💼 Join us now at #Lab25 | How can we fund public services?
09:00-10:15 | Education Area 3, Museum of Liverpool / youtube.com/live/3Lb22MihhjU…
👉 @Dan4Barnet
👉 @YuanfenYang
👉 Heather Stewart
👉 @Summers_AD
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8 Jul 2025
This was also broadly the conclusion of Wealth Tax Commission (ukwealth.tax).
BUT last part is important: government should be doing serious reform of existing taxes on wealth. E.g. our proposal to raise >£10bil from CGT...(not just ⬆️ rates!) centax.org.uk/reforming-the-…
8 Jul 2025
IFS pooh-poohs wealth taxes:
- difficult to make the case that an annual tax on wealth would be a sensible part of the tax system even in principle.
- strong reasons to radically reform how we tax sources & uses of wealth, inc reforming capital income taxes
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8 Jul 2025
We worked on a similar proposal with @TheIFS before the last Budget, published here: ifs.org.uk/publications/capi…
Last October, government nudged the rate up to 24% but left all the other problems untouched. CGT needs major reform, not just tinkering.
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Andy Summers retweeted
26 Jun 2025
Frankly outrageous from the govt. This new, and I think unprecedented, ban on civil servants speaking in public will damage public debate, politics, policy making and the civil service itself.
What are they thinking?
instituteforgovernment.org.u…
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16 Mar 2025
Switzerland currently raises 1% of GDP from its wealth tax, equivalent to a bit over £500m per week for UK. (But doesn't have CGT or full IHT)
All this and more covered in the evidence papers of the Wealth Tax Commission (wealthandpolicy.com), available for anyone to read.
15 Mar 2025
Your figure is shear fantasy. Show me anywhere in the world that’s had a wealth tax — plenty of examples — that has raised anything like £460m per week. You’re just making stuff up. And even if you got a fair whack in year one (tho nothing like your figures) you’d get peanuts by year 2/3 — because the wealthy would have scarpered. Also, even if you could magically conjure up all that extra money you’d waste it — as so much of the £1 trillion the government already spends is wasted by politicians who’ve never run anything.
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23 Jan 2025
About those 10,800 millionaires who left the UK... it's based on fewer than 100 people, who changed location on LinkedIn... not a serious study.
@timharford.bsky.social already debunked these stats ages ago. Why are they still being reported as fact?
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00230…
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5 Nov 2024
Non-doms are now within IHT regime and will be looking to limit their exposure. Without any cap on AR, this surely involves buying up an absolute tonne of farmland...also not good for real farmers. They will still do this to some extent, as relief at 50% is better than nothing.
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3 Nov 2024
If the farmer who phoned in to #bbclaurak is facing an Inheritance Tax bill of £1m under new rules, she must have a farm worth about £8million. According to HMRC's stats, this would make it one of the 20 most valuable farms facing IHT each year. Might've been useful context for the show!
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3 Nov 2024
Finally, big credit to @RachelReevesMP for going on #bbclaurak the Sunday *after* the Budget so she can take proper questions, unlike previous Chancellors who've gone on the week before when they can't actually say anything, which was a total waste of everyone's time. Hope she will stick to this!
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3 Nov 2024
For anyone who wants workings for the £8m / top20 stat: to get £1m IHT you need farmland worth £5m @20%. That's on top of £3m (effectively) tax free for a couple. HMRC stats show only 37 estates with claim for Agricultural Relief >£5m, with half of those below £6.4m. So £8m is comfortably top 20.
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1 Nov 2024
This is quite strong language from someone who obviously doesn't understand that trusts also currently benefit from Agricultural Relief and Business Relief and this reform is capping it for them as well.
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1 Nov 2024
Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of farm lobbying... 🙃
"Small farms will be broken up and they'll all be bought by big landowners, this is the end of farming as we know it."
Reality:
🤫big landowners* currently buying up farmland because they get unlimited IHT relief
😩 pushing up prices for everyone else including small tenant farmers who want to buy
🧐 actual small farms unaffected by this reform because £3m farm still pays no IHT in practice
Capping IHT relief is part of the solution for small farms, not the problem!
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1 Nov 2024
For some worked examples explaining the IHT for a £3m and £5m farm, see my earlier post: x.com/Summers_AD/status/1851…
31 Oct 2024
Even farms worth £5,000,000 will in practice only pay Inheritance Tax of less than 1% per year (for 10yrs). How can that be?
Some worked examples...
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1 Nov 2024
For more discussion of the issues and tonnes of facts about IHT using actual tax data, check out our @CenTaxUK report: centax.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
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