Richard Brooks
Born (1965-08-18) 18 August 1965 (age 58)
NationalityEnglish
Occupations
Known forInvestigative journalism

Richard Brooks (born 18 August 1965) is a British investigative journalist and former tax inspector. He writes principally for Private Eye, is the author of books on accountancy and tax avoidance, and was a 16-year senior corporate tax inspector for HMRC. He is the joint winner of two Paul Foot Awards, an annual award for investigative or campaigning journalism.

Career

Brooks worked as a HM Revenue and Customs tax inspector for 16 years up until 2005 specialising in international and corporate taxation.[1][2]

Since 2005, he has been a regular contributor to Private Eye.[2] In 2008 Brooks was joint-winner of the Paul Foot Award for his investigation into the privatisation of the CDC Group. He is the author of The Great Tax Robbery: How Britain Became a Tax Haven for Fat Cats and Big Business (2013) and the co-author (with David Craig) of Plundering the Public Sector: How New Labour are letting consultants run off with £70 billion of our money (2006).[3] With Andrew Bousfield, he was joint-winner again of the Paul Foot Award in 2014 for their investigations in Private Eye on bribery inShady Arabia and the Desert Fix.[4] In 2018 Brooks published a new book, Bean Counters: The Triumph of Accountants and how they broke Capitalism.[5]

Richard Brooks is a digger and a troublemaker who niggles away at difficult subjects in a meticulous, punchy and highly effective way.

— Alan Rusbridger, Editor Guardian.[6]

This is where Brooks comes into his own: not only does he have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of [tax] anomalies sanctioned by the state, he also has an ear for resonant detail.

— Jonathan Ford, Lead Writer Financial Times[7]

Richard Brooks is an ex-HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) tax inspector turned investigative journalist, regarded as one of the U.K.'s best reporters on tax avoidance.

— The International Tax Review[8]

In January 2022, Brooks alongside Ian Hislop and Solomon Hughes presented evidence on MPs' conduct to the House of Commons' Standards Committee[9][10]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ "The principles of tax policy: Written evidence submitted by Richard Brooks". Parliament U.K. 21 January 2011. I am a journalist with Private Eye magazine. I write on a number of issues including tax and was a member of the Guardian's "Tax Gap" team that ran a series on corporate tax avoidance two years ago. Until 2005 I was a tax inspector at HMRC specialising in international and corporate taxation
  2. ^ a b "Private Eye and public scandals". BBC News. 14 October 2011. Richard Brooks is one. He was a tax inspector for 16 years, and spent a year at the Treasury giving policy advice to ministers.
  3. ^ "Curtis Brown". www.curtisbrown.co.uk.
  4. ^ "Paul Foot Award 2014", Private Eye, No. 1386, 20 February 2015, p10
  5. ^ "The Triumph of the Accountants by Richard Brooks — who guards the guards?". Financial Times. 5 June 2018.
  6. ^ "The Paul Foot Award 2008". Private Eye. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
  7. ^ "All Carrot and no Stick". Financial Times. 22 March 2013.
  8. ^ "Richard Brooks". ITR. 11 December 2013.
  9. ^ "Ian Hislop Tears Into MPs Over Sleaze, Second Jobs And Lobbying". HuffPost UK. 25 January 2022.
  10. ^ "Standards Committee announce new evidence sessions on reform of Code of Conduct for MPs". Parliament. Retrieved 29 January 2022.

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