Dan Neidle

Spear's Review                                                                            

We were into Dan Neidle ‘before he was cool’, or so the team at Spear’s likes to joke. Neidle was head of tax at Clifford Chance, one of the UK’s biggest law firms, but in May 2022 he left and founded Tax Policy Associates, a not-for-profit organisation that advises politicians and journalists on the effects of tax policy. He may have also become the most famous tax lawyer in history.            

Tax Policy Associates looks in detail at the implementation of tax rules and how they affect real people’s lives. Neidle’s biggest coup has been an investigation related to Nadhim Zahawi and his conflict with HMRC while he was in charge of it. After Zahawi was made chancellor, Neidle spotted an error in an offshore company’s accounts that led to the discovery that what might have otherwise been Zahawi’s holding in YouGov, the polling company he had co-founded in 2000, was in fact the property of an offshore company.                    

Neidle published what would turn out to be a remarkably accurate assessment of how much tax was due. Zahawi lost the role of chancellor as prime ministers came and went but remained in the cabinet – albeit not for long. Neidle (who has ties to the Labour Party) fended off threats from Zahawi’s lawyers and emerged with a resounding victory when Zahawi was forced to resign from the government.                    

Journalists and commentators now hang on Neidle’s social media feeds and scour his blog. He tells Spear’s: ‘I wanted tax people to contribute more to public discourse and thought I could help with that. I never anticipated the degree to which the Zahawi thing would blow up. I’m currently a weird combination of technical specialist and amateur-level journalist.’ It’s a combination that means he wields a lot of influence.