Some have said I should comment on the Sunday Times Rich List. OK, if you insist. This says most of it: When the Blair administration came to power in 1997, the wealth of Britain’s richest 1,000 stood at £98.99 billion. The £261 billion rise in the wealth of today’s top 1,000 represents a 263% jump
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I do, as so often, recommend Simon Caulkin’s column from the Observer this weekend. It, when combined with William Keegan’s column, made a refreshing page of reading. One paragraph did however stand out from Simon’s column, even if it is in turn based on a quote from another journalist: As Anthony Hilton wrote in the
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Finfacts, one of the best sources of what is going on in Ireland, has reported: Cruickshank, Ireland’s leading firm of patent and intellectual property attorneys, has warned the Irish Government that unless it urgently revisits its recent changes to patent tax laws, Ireland could be turned into a corporate tax haven, without creating any local
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The above title comes from the Observer. As they say in today’s paper: A holy alliance of church groups and bishops is demanding that Gordon Brown closes legal loopholes used by the super-rich to avoid tax. Christian Aid, Cafod, Church Action on Poverty and the Church Council for Monetary Justice have all this weekend issued
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For those who are quick, there’s a chance to see the repeat of Friday’s Newsnight on BBC2 that features 10 minutes on the domicile campaign. Start about 10 minutes into the programme. The opening feature focuses on the UK government web site highlighting the advantages of the UK as a tax haven, about which they
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MSN reports (from the FT) that: The US Securities and Exchange Commission has raised the unexpected possibility of US companies being allowed to file their accounts in line solely with international accounting standards, not US rules – creating the hope of a genuine global accounting benchmark No, in that case why do we need the
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The European Parliament has set the cat amongst the pigeons on IFRS 8. The motion calling for an impact assessment of this deeply flawed standard, to which I referred here, was passed by the EU Parliament yesterday. There’s more on this here. I would stress, the European Parliament technically has no power to stop this
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Dennis Howlett covers the option backdating scandal at Apple today and provides links to useful stuff. Reuters summarise the story like this: Fred Anderson, Apple’s ex-chief financial officer, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on his alleged participation in the backdating of stock options, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web
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A question has been posted on this site. It asks: I am puzzled by this so called offshore tax amnesty. I have for many years had an offshore savings account as a consequence of working overseas. But I have always declared interest for tax while resident and working in the UK. Yet the impression I
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