Dear All,
It’s working – thanks to our “Artful Dodger” adverts, people are talking about tax dodging on the day VAT goes up.
Our adverts are in the Guardian, the i and the Independent – the Telegraph and the Metro refused to run them at the last minute. [1]
We’ve had news coverage all over the place, including the BBC and Sky News. [2] On Sky breakfast news, our adverts were held up to camera at the start of a 5 minute discussion about tax dodging. Ten minutes later a government minister came on – the presenter showed the minister our ad and asked: “why are you fiddling about with VAT when tax dodging costs us £120 billion?”
On top of that, thousands of us have been spreading the word by forwarding the advert to friends, posting it up on our Facebook profiles, or sharing it on Twitter.
Bit by bit, we’re making it harder for George Osborne to keep quiet about tax dodging. A few months ago hardly anyone knew about the scandal of how much tax dodging costs us all each year. Today, thanks to us, millions of people are reading about it.
Today’s success proves that our plan to force tax dodging onto the agenda with hard-hitting ads is working. So we need to make sure we keep up the pressure. We’ve already got another £10,000 to spend, because we smashed our original fundraising target, and some newspapers wouldn’t run our ads. If we can raise another £10,000, we can start putting these adverts up on bus stops and billboards.
Imagine the stir when we put our ads up in the constituencies of senior Cabinet ministers. Or in places where the government is desperate to win in the local, Welsh and Scottish elections this May.
Click here to join the thousands of us who have already donated and get these adverts up where the politicians don’t want to see them: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/artful-dodger-ads
Hitting us all with the VAT increase is expected to raise £13 billion. Meanwhile, tax dodging costs us all up to £120 billion. Yet the government is laying off thousands of tax inspectors who could be collecting some of this missing money, and closing local tax offices. The Inland Revenue has even been told to give tax dodgers an easier ride! [3] Our adverts are helping to expose this scandal.
These adverts are people power in action. Thousands of us voted to make tax dodging a priority campaign for 38 Degrees. Hundreds of us helped come up with the “Artful Dodger” idea. Thousands of us have donated to get the ad in the papers. Now let’s raise more money to up the pressure and prove we’re not going to let the government off the hook on tax dodging.
Click here to make a secure donation: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/artful-dodger-ads
Thanks for being involved,
David, Hannah, Johnny, and the 38 Degrees team
PS On Friday, we handed in our emergency petition of over 70,000 signatures demanding a full and impartial review of Murdoch’s plan to take control of the rest of BSkyB. There’ll be more to do soon, but for now please make sure the government tackles tax dodging by chipping in for our ads:https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/artful-dodger-ads
NOTES
[1] None of the newspapers that are part of the Daily Mail group have printed our ads. The Daily Mail increased their prices very late in the day, which meant we couldn’t afford to put our ads there, and the Metro promised they’d run the ads and then didn’t print them at the last minute, without any warning. We’re going to spend the money put aside for those papers on ads for bus stops and billboards. You can e-mail the editors at the papers that didn’t run the ads here:[email protected] (Daily Mail); [email protected](Daily Telegraph); [email protected] (Metro). We’ll post up any replies from those newspapers on the blog, here: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/didnt-print-the-tax-ads
[2] We will post a round-up of all the media coverage on the 38 Degrees blog later:http://blog.38degrees.org.uk
[3] The VAT increase is expected to raise approx £13bn per year: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/vat-rise-puts-250000-jobs-at-risk-2175047.html
Tax dodging costs the UK up to £120bn a year: http://www.pcs.org.uk/en/campaigns/tax-justice/index.cfm
The Inland Revenue is expected make 13,000 officials redundant by 2015: http://www.taxjournal.com/tj/articles/tax-experts-oppose-hmrc-cuts-package
“Revenue & Customs will adopt a less combative approach to resolving tax disputes with businesses in a move designed to cut a mounting legal logjam”: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cd1f1618-abcb-11df-9f02-00144feabdc0.html
