Richard Murphy (born 21 March 1958) is a British chartered accountant and political economist who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion. He advises the Trades Union Congress on economics and taxation, and founded the Tax Justice Network. He is a Professor of Accounting Practice at University of Sheffield Management School. Early life Richard Murphy was born in 1958 and brought up in Ipswich. His undergraduate degree was in Economics and Accountancy at the University of Southampton, and further trained at KPMG becoming a Chartered Accountant. Career For much of his early career he was an accountant in Downham Market, Norfolk. In 1985 he co-founded an accountancy firm which became Murphy Deeks Nolan. The company was sold in 2000. Murphy was also the founder of a company that became the European distributor for the game Trivial Pursuit. Murphy has since admitted that the manufacturing operation he set up in Ireland to manufacture Trivial Pursuit was there to avoid UK taxation, something of which he is now ashamed and was a turning point in his career towards anti-tax avoidance campaigning. Since 2003 Murphy has become more involved in economic and taxation policy issues. He was a co-founder of the Tax Justice Network. He is the director of Tax Research LLP. However, because Tax Research LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership he is technically the designated member rather than a director. The only other member of Tax Research LLP is Mrs Jacqueline Murphy. Murphy was named by International Tax Review as the seventh most significant person having influence on tax policy, practice and administration in 2013. In 2009, Murphy lost a libel claim by Lord Ashcroft and associated businesses where he misunderstood an article posted on an unrelated website and published a blog post claiming that Lord Ashcroft's Belize bank provided "tax evasion services". In 2021 Murphy was appointed Professor of Accounting Practice at University of Sheffield Management School. Previously he had been a Professor of Practice in International Political Economy in the Department of International Politics at City University London,. He had also been a visiting fellow at University of Portsmouth Business School, the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex, and at the Tax Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. He was the founder of the Fair Tax Mark, but resigned out of unhappiness with a proposal it adopt an international standard . Public