The UK is wedded to the class system, and so still awards new year honours of varying classes, indicating your rank in society. Amongst recipients this year are Mike Rake, senior partner of KPMG international, who is now Sir Mike Rake. Candidly, this is a Knight too far. He was senior partner of KPMG in
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Polly Toynbee has a new year’s wish in the Guardian today. Amongst them this: ¬? Create a standing tax commission to expose who pays what and how fat cats squeeze through loopholes. Get tough on tax exiles: cut the time they can spend here tax-free while stashing their cash in Jersey or Monaco, losing the
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I’ve mentioned Simon Caulkin’s writing here before. I will again. In considering the role of the heretic challenging the status quo with a truth that is obvious, and yet unacceptable (as Galileo did the Catholic Church) he wrote last Sunday: Today those keeping people in ‘a pearly haze of superstition’ about their place in the
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I’ve found out who some of the sad people who read tax blogs rather than celebrate Christmas are. They’re the staff of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P)in the USA who issued a press release about me on Boxing Day. Surely they had better things to do over Christmas than spend their time away
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I mentioned recently that Statoil was one of the most ethical companies. It’s disappointing to note therefore that it has settled fines of $21 million dollars this year for paying bribes to secure contracts in Iran. Now this has been drawn to my attention I correct the impression given earlier. Corruption is always unacceptable. And
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Just before Christmas I asked where all the accountants were in declaiming the government’s decision not to pursue corruption investigations at BAE. I still haven’t noted their presence in the debate, but it’s good to see two major fund managers saying the government got this wrong. Full marks to Hermes who have said (according to
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The Sunday Times broke the news on Sunday that: [HM Revenue & Customs] investigators have raided the homes of executives at a top City accountancy firm over a £100m tax avoidance scheme used by leading sportsmen, musicians and investment bankers. The firm in question was Vantis – an AIM listed accountancy practice. The Sunday Tines
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The lat time the FTSE 100 index ended the year over 6,000 points and upbeat was 1999. Within months the tears began. Yesterday it was 6245. In 1999 it was around 6800. I thought the 2000 crash was inevitable. I said why in the paper I co-wrote with Colin Hines and Alan Simpson for the
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Back to work (at least for an hour so) and so I had a quick look at the blog stats for the last few days. All blog owners will probably tell you this is a compulsive, if not always useful pastime. This time though they did make for fascinating reading. Sunday (Christmas Eve) was the
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