Dan Neidle

They think it's to do with the insolvency act...

We're investigating a firm called MP Estate Planning, which sells trusts to save elderly people from the "modern threats" of divorce, bankruptcy, care home fees and inheritance tax.

We believe the trusts don't work.

If you've come across the firm, please get in touch.

Wealthy Dubai residents race back to UAE to avoid tax bills Some risk spending too few days in the emirate and too many in the UK

I don't really understand this. Most expats won't be within just a few days of falling UK tax resident. Even if they are, the obvious solution is: spend a few weeks in France, Italy, the US... anywhere at all except the UK.

www.ft.com/content/80bf...

Thanks but I can’t take credit - all these attempts to challenge primary tax legislation fail. Just a sad waste of time/money

No, this is very different. Sovereign citizens preying on conspiracy theorists and their naive and vulnerable.

Simon Goldberg and Empower the People: selling US tax fraud Simon Goldberg and Empower the People sell a “1099-OID” scheme where hundreds of Britons file fabricated US tax refund claims. Read the investigation.

Our report: buff.ly/ESQDPdk

The moral of the story is: if you buy into something that's obviously fraud, you shouldn't expect the people running it to care about your privacy, or indeed be remotely competent.

Before we knew about the vulnerability, we received a large number of Empower the People's internal documents (perhaps obtained through this vulnerability, perhaps otherwise).

We're passing them all to the authorities but will not retain copies of any personal information.

We told Empower the People on 27 February. It should have taken five minutes to fix the problem, but it took them four days.

Naturally they're not registered with the Information Commissioner.

IT security specialists told us this vulnerability is routinely discovered by automated scanning tools that continuously crawl the web. People do this to harvest documents for identity theft/fraud/etc

ETP's clients should expect that criminal groups have their documents

We published a report on Empower the People last week.

The next day, several people got in touch to say that all Empower the People's "client" files were visible on their website (via a well known Wordpress url). Anyone could see names and then download the documents.

If I was doing a fraud then I'd try to make sure nobody could see who my "clients" were, or what I was up to.

Empower the People were not that competent.

They sell another scheme that will magically make your mortgage go away. It works by writing mean letters demanding £39m from the Land Registry and its CEO

In theory that could be blackmail or fraud; in practice it's just daft, and we suspect the letters are all binned.

We wrote last week about "Empower the People", a weird UK group that claims to get the US tax authorities to refund all your UK credit card spending.

Incredibly the IRS sometimes sends the cheques. That doesn't stop it being - obviously - fraud.

What’s worse than running a scheme that defrauds the IRS and sends fake £39m demands to public officials?

Accidentally publishing the names of all your clients on the internet.

There will be a fantastic prize for the best/worst example.

(Prize may consist of lifetime subscription to the Tax Police Associates newsletter)

That tax advice is epically bad (if you buy property with the intention of flipping it, and are stupid enough to advertise that's what you did, then there's no CGT exemption).

But he says he "knows a lot about tax". Uh huh.

Question is: can you do better? Meaning: worse?

TikTok, YouTube and Facebook are full of rubbish tax influencers, spinning any kind of old codswallop, whether it's for clicks or fees

I'm trying to create a "Greatest Hits" list. The worst of the worst

I'd love it if people could post examples. I'll start - Samuel Leeds:

Mmmmm. You sure?

Yes! Pissing off the IRS seems a really bad strategy. Why not defraud Denmark instead? The prisons are *fantastic*

(This is not legal advice)

Rubbish criminal.

Simon Goldberg and Empower the People: selling US tax fraud Simon Goldberg and Empower the People sell a “1099-OID” scheme where hundreds of Britons file fabricated US tax refund claims. Read the investigation.

Our full report here, including the private prosecution Goldberg brought against a YouTuber who revealed the fraud: buff.ly/t6Tpm3x

Here's the tax fraud Goldberg is selling, right now, to UK consumers.

A claim that you can claim a tax refund from the US tax authority - the IRS - for your normal consumer spending in the UK.

Absolutely bonkers.

Simon Goldberg denied to me he’s running a huge tax fraud. He says he's an expert. Says he “studied under Winston Shrout”

Shrout was convicted of tax fraud, got 10 years, fled, & was captured by US marshals

I have. More on that soon!

And for updates, you can follow me here or subscribe to our free newsletter, which comes with a guaranteed IRS cheque for $1m*

newsletter.taxpolicy.org.uk/subscription...

(*cheque offer strictly limited to Simon Goldberg)

Our full report is here, with all the original videos, including (if you can bear it) four hours of webinars, and (if you can really bear it) the full US tax explanation.

taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/02/25/s...

So what should happen?

1. the CPS should discontinue the prosecution
2. the police should start a fraud investigation (if the IRS don't get there first)
3. FCA and HMRC should investigate.

What will happen? Watch this space.

We then obtained *four hours* of webinars of Goldberg pitching the 1099-OID US tax fraud to members, and explaining exactly how it works. Plus other documents that make clear beyond any doubt what's going on.

I told Goldberg he'd lied to me. I didn't hear back.

I put this to Goldberg and he told me he had no involvement in anything to do with 1099-OID reclaims. He said the manual was some kind of decoy.