I'm always surprised how many otherwise intelligent people respond emotionally rather than logically to news stories about tax. We hear them moaning about celebrities' tax avoidance schemes, and boycotting Amazon and Starbucks because of their immoral attitude to taxation. Fair enough, but let's take a step back. How many people write to HMRC saying 'Actually, it's immoral for me to just pay the 20p in the pound I am legally obliged to pay, could I pay 30p instead? That way we'd have a better NHS etc.'? Not a lot, I suspect. But when companies and individuals employ tax avoidance, all too often people say 'Why aren't they paying more? It's immoral? That's money that should be going to the NHS etc.' However, just like the 20p in the pound PAYE, all they are doing is paying the minimum the tax system requires them to pay. (Gary Barlow's scheme failed to do this legally, hence the problems he is having.) Rather than whinging about th...

The logo of my company, Creativity Unleashed. How about it, government? Unleash a bit of creativity... Every now and then I get really irritated with the government. I know this is not exactly news, nor uncommon. I can never remember a time when everyone was saying 'Isn't this government wonderful, aren't we lucky to have these excellent people in charge?' I think the time we've come closest in the UK in recent years was in the honeymoon period of the Blair government, and even then there were some whinges (not to mention, no doubt, moans from the likes of my friend Henry Gee, who believes that the world will one day recognize that Boris Johnson is the greatest statesman who has ever lived). But the thing of which I am complaining today is not a feature of any particular government. They all do it. I think I have moaned about this before, but it requires regular revisiting. I just get absolutely furious when the government tells us that the only way to get mo...

There are some businesses that have an unusual problem. They sell commodities that have a value up to a certain point in time, but that value drops to zero after that moment. A classic example is an airline's inventory. The value of an airline seat drops to zero at the moment the check-in closes. The realization of this simple fact changed the way airlines sold seats in the 1980s and 1990s, pumping up revenue significantly. How does this knowledge make you money? Because with the right systems, as time runs out, you can sell off the seat that won't go at full price much cheaper and provided you cover the incremental costs of carrying the passenger, then you are still making extra profit. I bring this up, because it struck me there was a new, more interesting possibility that could easily be made available to push up profits even further. I was buying a railway ticket online and, as you can see, the system generously offered to bump me up to first class for a suitable extra bi...