Brooks worked as a HM Revenue and Customs tax inspector for 16 years up until 2005 specialising in international and corporate taxation.
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.
[5] Richard Brooks is a digger and a troublemaker who niggles away at difficult subjects in a meticulous, punchy and highly effective way.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.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.With Nick Wallis, he co-authored Private Eye's extensive report on the British Post Office scandal, "Justice Lost In The Post".
[9] In January 2022, Brooks alongside Ian Hislop and Solomon Hughes presented evidence on MPs' conduct to the House of Commons' Standards Committee[10][11]