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 Oversight
PWC’s Total Tax - the [...]
As Prem Sikka says in the Guardian:
The subprime crisis should teach us to keep a much closer eye on company auditors from now on
As he notes:
On February 27 2008, Carlyle Capital Corporation published its annual accounts for the year to December 31 2007. These accounts were audited by the Guernsey office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s [...]
The BBC has reported that:
Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC), a unit of the private equity firm Carlyle Group, has said it will not be able to meet lenders’ demands for money. The US mortgage-backed bond fund will collapse if, as expected, its lenders seize its remaining assets. CCC’s problems are the latest sign of the credit [...]
John Whiting of PricewaterhouseCoopers has told the BBC:
It has an image of being secretive but it is major financial centre. An awful lot of extremely reputable business goes on there
Well he would say that, of course. His firm is there. But what is it that you do there exactly John? And why does a legitimate [...]
Liechtenstein is tiny: it is 15 miles long, has a population of under 35,000 and one main town. It’s existence is effectively the consequence of a bad real estate deal by the Holy Roman Empire in the 18th century; it became a sovereign state in the 19th century. But that’s a joke. Even its so-called [...]
Prem Sikka has a knack of hitting nails on the head. His latest Guardian piece looks at the relationship between the state and accountancy firms. As he puts it:
There is something very odd about the way UK governments deal with administrative failures. In earlier times, rulers called upon obedient high-priests to manage their crises. In [...]
Dennis has waded into this debate.
And he can see no more merit in PWC’s TTC than I can. As he put it:
[Do] PwC think we’re all idiots? A year 1 CIMA student could work out just how appallingly illogical this argument really is.
The sadness in all this is that well meaning people are being hood [...]
PWC’s weekly tax newsletter includes the headline:
PwC’s family business survey notes hunger for simpler UK tax rules and lower rates
If you can work your way through the password minefield the story is here.
And the story is wrong: entirely wrong. It’s political misinformation, yet again.
The evidence is simple to find. The Chancellor delivered simpler tax rules [...]
Another strange thing about PWC’s Total Tax Contribution.
178 countries are considered.
Places as obscure as St Vincent and the Grenadines make it in.
So why don’t Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Cayman and the British Virgin Islands feature in the survey?
Are they the UK for these purposes?
Or would PWC just rather ignore some of the biggest [...]
I wrote earlier today about PWC’s new Total Tax Contribution report and said I’d expose the fundamental accounting flaw inherent within it. I’ll keep my promise.
Look at this diagram:
Seen the problem yet? It’s this: the total tax rate is expressed as a percentage of profit.
Now note where this is highest: Africa. And that’s not a [...]
