All blog owners like to look at their visitor statistics every now and again. the one who denies this is a liar.
I noticed something curious when I did so recently. It seems that the four most popular articles on this blog are (in order):
Yet more misinformation from PWC
PWC’s Total Tax – the fundamental accounting flaw
Biased misinformation – The PWC Total Tax Contribution 2007
What does that say?
These are my links for March 28th:
I’m sometimes amazed at some of the accusations that have been levelled against me for for simply asking that people pay the right amount of tax, at the right time in the right place. The accusation by Nichola Ross Martin of AccountingWEB that I was an extremist was one of the more absurd, and does perhaps say a great deal about the current state of the accountancy profession, and how out of touch with its social responsibility it is.
It’s therefore cheering on occasion to find some people believe in what I and those I work with are doing. This is an encouraging example:
Early Day Motion
EDM 1251
TUC REPORT ON THE UK TAX GAP
20.03.2008Hopkins, Kelvin
That this House welcomes the TUC Report, The Missing Billions – The UK Tax Gap; congratulates its author Richard Murphy, Director of Tax Research LLP, on a brilliant analysis of how tax losses to the Treasury and thus to the public purse amount to £33 billion each year; notes that this figure comprises £13 billion from tax avoidance by individuals, £12 billion from tax avoidance by the 700 largest corporations and £8 billion from tax planning by individuals earning more than £100,000 per annum; believes that this vast lost revenue should be collected in future years and used, among other things, to raise the state pension, increase child benefit and pay for free long-term care; and strongly supports the report’s conclusion that action can be taken to address the problem and that what is required to achieve this is the necessary political will.
Cayman NetNews has reported that:
The Governor of the Cayman Islands, His Excellency Stuart Jack, CVO, today (Thursday, 27 March) announced that he has put three senior police officers on required leave to facilitate enquiries into allegations against officers of the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS).
Police Commissioner Stuart Kernohan, Deputy Commissioner Rudolph Dixon and Detective Chief Superintendent John Jones were put on required leave with immediate effect to enable an investigating team from the Metropolitan Police Service led by DCS Martin Bridger to proceed with their enquiries.
As Cayman NetNews rightly says, there must be a presumption of innocence at this stage. It’s interesting to note the follwoing though:
In a separate statement, Senior Investigating Officer Martin Bridger said that much of his 30 year career as a detective has been spent dealing with issues of integrity within the police services. This included working in the Anti-Corruption Unit of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, Northern Ireland’s Police Ombudsman Office and advising other UK and European police services on how to meet the challenges offered by breaches of integrity and wrongdoing.
I think the nature of the allegations are clear.
These are my links for March 27th:
These are my links for March 26th:
Der Spiegel has reported that:
The head of Germany’s leading Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, said the world financial crisis currently unfolding would need strong and organized government intervention to stop further bleeding in financial institutions. Simple market corrections, he said, won’t do the trick. “I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power,” he told an audience in Frankfurt on Monday. “Making liquidity available isn’t the cure-all.”
Coming on the same day as Martin Wolf has said the same thing I believe it’s safe to say that the neo-liberal model is dead.
But there are those who persist with the other view. This is John Kay in the FT today:
The notion that future banking crises can be averted by better regulation demonstrates unrealistic expectations of what regulation might achieve. ..
Perhaps there was once a golden age when the authority and wisdom of central bankers were so great that such regulation was possible and effective, although the recurrence of bank crises suggests otherwise. Today the financial services industry is the most powerful political lobby in the country and public trust in and respect for regulation are low. All regulators feel buffeted by threats of legal action; there is no easier way to win applause from business audiences than by denouncing red tape.
But in financial services, the demand today is for more regulation. That call should be resisted. The state cannot ensure the stability of the financial system and a serious attempt to do so would involve intervention on an unacceptable scale. But to acknowledge responsibility for financial stability is to assume a costly liability for failure to achieve it. That is what has happened.
The dinosaurs aren’t going to die without a struggle it seems, but the argument Kay presents is absurd. What’s he’s saying is that finance must be allowed to do what it will and the state should pick up the pieces when it goes wrong. That, of course, is exactly why it must be either regulated, and reformed until that can be done. It’s the latter that Kay ignores as a possibility, and he’s wrong to do so. No one is going to give banks licence to carry on in the future as they have to date.
Martin Wolf said this in the FT today:
Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free- market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over. It showed in deeds its agreement with the remark by Joseph Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, that “I no longer believe in the market’s self-healing power”. Deregulation has reached its limits.
He’s right. Now we’re reining in. And offshore secrecy has to be very high on the list of abuses that has to stop. That’s for the same reasons that Wolf argues this:
The lobbies of Wall Street will, it is true, resist onerous regulation of capital requirements or liquidity, after this crisis is over. They may succeed. But, intellectually, their position is now untenable. Systemically important institutions must pay for any official protection they receive. Their ability to enjoy the upside on the risks they run, while shifting parts of the downside on to society at large, must be restricted. This is not just a matter of simple justice (although it is that, too). It is also a matter of efficiency. An unregulated, but subsidised, casino will not allocate resources well. Moreover, that subsidisation does not now apply only to shareholders, but to all creditors. Its effect is to make the costs of funds unreasonably cheap. These grossly misaligned incentives must be tackled.
The world is not the same. Some of us are pleased.
The Chartered Institute of Tax issued the following press release today:
The Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) welcomes the second Early Day Motion (EDM) on income shifting that has been tabled in the House of Commons. When the first EDM was tabled the CIOT said that it had long been of the view that fundamental reform to the structure of small business taxation was necessary if small businesses were to be able to plan their tax affairs with any degree of certainty.
The second EDM says: “That this House‚Ķ calls on HM Treasury and other affected departments to use the additional year that they have allowed themselves for consultation on this issue to undertake a thorough review of more appropriate means of providing smaller enterprises with a suitable legal entity designed for use in the 21st century, and not the 19th century as the limited company was, that will simultaneously reduce the taxation, accounting and regulatory burdens on smaller enterprises, so freeing them to generate wealth and employment in the UK economy, whilst ensuring that they can with minimum effort comply with the taxation and other requirements imposed upon them by law in a way that minimises risk of tax avoidance, creates a level playing field in which all in the sector can compete fairly and ensures that the right person is taxed on the reward they have earned at the right time and in ways which do not create artificial and inappropriate incentives to recategorise employment as self-employment, and the reward for labour effort expended as investment income.”
Rob Ellerby, CIOT President, says: “The MPs who tabled this motion are right to say that by extending the process for another year, the Government has given itself a great opportunity to think through the issue more fundamentally with a view to coming to a better answer.”
The EDM, tabled by David Drew MP, is based upon Tax Research’s submission on this issue to HM Revenue & Customs. I welcome CIOT’s endorsement of this approach.
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