Money, motives and what happens next

Fair questions

The ones worth asking, including the ones that assume the worst. If yours is not here, ask us and we will add it.

Supporting without buying

What if I cannot afford one of these, or do not need one, but want to show my support?

Spread the message. That is the reason we exist, and it costs nothing. Tell somebody who has not heard the argument, and you have done the thing the shirts are only a means to.

If you also want to give money, you can add a donation to any order, or send one on its own without buying anything. It starts at £1 and you can set it to whatever you like. There is no upper end and no suggested amount we are quietly hoping for.

All support is appreciated, and we mean the first paragraph as much as the second.

Why is the smallest donation £1?

Because anything less costs us money. Card processing takes a fixed fee from every payment however small, so a donation of a few pence arrives worth less than nothing and the campaign is out of pocket for having received it. A pound is roughly where a donation starts being worth more than it costs to take.

It is not a judgement about small amounts. It is arithmetic, and we would rather explain it than quietly round your donation up.

The money

What do you do with the money?

We are a not-for-profit. Nobody takes a salary and nobody takes a dividend, from sales or from donations. There is no owner waiting at the end of this to be paid.

What we can do with what is raised depends on how much there is, and we would rather say that plainly than promise something we cannot deliver at the scale we are at.

A small amount goes to charities working on the things this campaign is about. A more substantial amount funds direct campaigning — getting the argument in front of people who have not heard it, which is the thing that actually changes minds and the thing nobody funds.

We would rather do the second. The first is what honesty requires us to do if the second is out of reach.

How much of what I pay actually reaches the campaign?

Not all of it, and anybody who tells you otherwise isn’t being honest. The cost of making the item comes off first, and on everything we sell it is the largest part of the price. We then cover incidental overheads such as website fees and card fees. Everything else goes directly to the campaign, because there are no salaries and no dividends to shareholders.

Are you a registered charity?

No. We are a company limited by guarantee, which means there are no shareholders and no profits to distribute, but it is not the same thing as charity registration and we are not going to blur the two.

The practical difference to you: we cannot claim Gift Aid on a donation, and we are not overseen by a charity regulator. The practical difference to us: nobody can ever be paid out of this.

Who is “we”?

A very small operation. Tax Wealth Not Work Ltd, a company limited by guarantee registered in Scotland, number SC897855. The shop, the writing and the campaign are run by the people who set it up, and there is no office.

The argument

Is a t-shirt really going to change tax policy?

On its own, no. The shirt is not the point — it is a way of funding attention and of putting an argument somewhere it does not usually go. You buy a shirt, we buy attention. If the whole thing were about the shirt we would be a clothing brand, and a fairly small one.

And it does nothing folded in a drawer. What changes anything is somebody prepared to be seen holding the argument — the shirt only gives them something to point at when they are asked about it. Attention is what the money buys. A conversation is what the person wearing it starts, and it is the conversations that win.

We can sell you a shirt. We cannot wear it for you.

Isn’t “Tax Wealth Not Work” just envy dressed up?

It is a claim about how tax is structured, not about who deserves what. Income from work is taxed more heavily than income from owning things, and that is a choice somebody made rather than a law of nature. Whether you find that objectionable is up to you — but it is worth knowing it is true before you decide.

The longer version is on the case, with the numbers.

Are you affiliated with a political party?

No. The argument is about how tax works, and it does not belong to a party. We are not funded by one, not aligned with one, and not campaigning for one.

The chain

There is a QR code on my delivery note. What is it?

It is a chain code. Pass it to somebody, and if they use it when they order, their order becomes the next link in the chain after yours. That is the whole mechanism — it’s just something we came up with to give you an excuse to pass it on to someone else and start the conversation about what it is we are trying to do — which is to get the people who make the rules to see that there is popular support for the message of Tax Wealth Not Work.

How do I get a code to pass on?

Every order gets one. Take the order number from your confirmation email and put it in at twnw.org.uk/passiton, along with the postcode on the order, and we will show you the code to pass on. If you have a delivery note with a QR code, you can scan that or hand it to someone else to scan.

Do you track who I pass it to?

No. This isn’t about tracking people, it’s just an idea we came up with to give people the option to pass something on to spread the message. Only pass the code on if you’re comfortable with it, and there’s no benefit for someone ordering from the store with or without a code.

Ordering

Why does my order sometimes arrive in more than one parcel?

Different items are sourced from different places and will ship direct to you to keep costs down. What you were quoted at the checkout covers all of it, and you won’t be charged extra afterwards because it arrived in two boxes rather than one.

Why is nearly everything made to order?

Because the alternative is buying a pallet of shirts in the sizes we guess people want, tying up money that should be funding the campaign, and throwing away whatever is left. Made to order is slower. It is also the only version of this where nothing is wasted and nothing is dead stock.

The small printed things are the exception. Beer mats and sticker sheets are only worth selling if they are printed in batches, so those we hold, pack and post ourselves.

What do you do with my details?

Only what we need to take the order and get it to you, and nothing else. We do not build a mailing list from orders, there is no marketing opt-in at the checkout and we will not be spamming you with emails asking if you would like to keep contributing to the campaign. Buying something does not sign you up to anything and we do not sell your details. For more details, see the Privacy section linked at the bottom of this page.

Something has gone wrong with my order.

Email hello@twnw.org.uk and a person will answer. Delivery, returns and your rights if something is faulty are all set out in the info page.