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 [...]
PWC have published their second report on what they call “the total tax contribution” of business. I’ve commented on this before. More than once. It’s illiterate in accounting terms. I’ll explain why in another post. It’s flawed in economic terms. It’s biased. And it fails to consider the impact of its findings. Apart from that, [...]
An organisation called Fulcrum (unrelated to the firm of accountants of that name in which I am a practitioner) has reported the following results of the American PCOAB reviews of Big 4 audits in the USA:
Sobering, isn’t it?
Why is it that the accountancy profession tolerates these people?
That’s the question I keep asking. I wish I [...]
The Jamaica Gleaner has reported that:
Senator Don Wehby, Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service, has set up a special advisory committee, headed by tax expert Eric Crawford of PricewaterhouseCoopers, to explore the development of a International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Jamaica.
Why am I unsurprised by PWC’s presence? As [...]
The FT reported yesterday that, when referring to the change in behaviour forced on tax havens by the EU and OECD that:
Leonie Kerswill, a tax director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, says in spite of these changes: “There are still a lot of sophisticated financial centres that people can use if they don’t want to disclose anything.”
You can [...]
Reuters note that:
American International Group Inc shareholders in the USA have renewed claims against the company’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and about four dozen other individuals and companies, seeking to hold them liable for a financial restatement and a $1.64 billion regulatory settlement.
Now right and wrong is not known here. But prima facie one of the auditor’s [...]
