AccountingWEB: profoundly unethical conduct

Posted on

On Friday I posted a link on the AccountingWEB site to my entry on this blog on income shifting. Given that I was writing about comments made there that seemed fair.

On Saturday morning I noticed that the number of visits being made through the link had not risen since Friday night - which surprised me. So I checked the link.

When doing so I discovered that the link on the AccountingWEB site had been edited. The text still suggested that it was to this blog. But the hyperlink associated with that text had changed. It took the reader to a spoof article on AccountingWEB.

I was amazed. I have been an editor on AccountingWEB in my time and as such I know how their system works. Only an editor could have done this. And this turned out to be true. Nichola Ross Martin, tax editor of Accounting WEB admitted that she had received comments on my article and so she had edited the link. She admitted that perhaps she should have called me first.

I think that something of an understatement. My article suggested that in my opinion some in the profession were commenting unprofessionally on an indefensible tax practice from which they wish to continue to benefit, in my opinion unethically. To find that a link to an article which sought to promote higher professional standards of debate and conduct had been edited in such an underhand, and in my opinion unethical, fashion was quite astonishing.

But I suppose it proves my point: when the comments on taxation articles on AccountingWEB are treated as a joke by its editor why should anyone else take them seriously?


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here: