AccountingWEB has reported:
The Court of Appeal quashed accountants' hopes of being granted legal privilege for their tax advice in a decision in the Prudential v HMRC case handed down on Wednesday.
Fantastic!
Accountants do not have a right to legal privilege when trying to undermine the revenues of the state.
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Notwithstanding your unbridled joy at accountants being stiffed one way or another, you are wrong!
Accountants AND THEIR CLIENTS do not have not have legal professional privilege because accountants are not lawyers.
It has nothing to do with tax avoidance so stop slanting the argument.
@JayPee
Ah, so it’s evasion then, is it?
You don’t need it unless it is one or t’other
If you are tax compliant you have voluntarily disclosed all there is to know
So you are wrong
The law determines what is tax compliant or not – not HMRC or Richard Murphy.
There is a difference between relevance and fishing expeditions. It has been in our law for ages.
@JayPee
HMRC know that
They don’t do fishing trips
They ask for information
Jaypee if you know of a better way to reduce tax evasion, then tell. At present demanding transparency and complete information from taxpayers appears to be the only game in town.
James from D, if you stop taxing people then there will be no tax evasion or avoidance.
Just sayin’
Frankly if we got rid a lot of those ‘jobsworths’ in the civil service we could reduce taxes to a more competive rate, so there is little pay off from evasion and improve efficiency for our fewer taxes
A worthy goal would you not agree?
but lawyers do. (have the right to undermine….etc etc per your argument).
You have deliberately set a polemic course in your activities, which is great, and I enjoy it.
But please make some attempt at “fairness”, even-handed-ness etc.
@mel
Your argument is absurd. Justice is not delivered by saying that if one person murders then so should another be allowed to do so.
And just because lawyers can hide their client’s tax abuse does not mean that accountants should join them in that nefarious activity.
Justice is about looking to a high level common playing field – not about raising to the lowest possible level of regulation that can sustain a minimal level of conflict within society just sufficient to avoid social breakdown
@Creg
You have a very odd concept of ” jobsworth” people. Do 40,000 police officers fall into this category?
Let me put an alternative hypothesis to you. It is this. Suppose that we got rid of all the abusing lawyers, bankers and accountants in tax havens and suppose that at the same time we put in place a general anti-avoidance principle in the UK, abolished the domicile rule, changed the residence rules to a citizenship basis, limited tax relief of all kinds for those in the 40% and 50% tax brackets earning more than £100,000 a year, reinforced the rules which prevents the redesignation of income is capital and reformed inheritance tax so that reveal wealth taxes would be due. We would at a stroke cut out the ” abuse worth” jobs in the economy and liberate significant amount of tax so that public services could be funded and tax rates might well be cut for most. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Isn’t that a worthy goal?
How could anyone disagree?
“Suppose that we got rid of all the abusing lawyers, bankers…” That’d make a good blog, Richard.
“Accountants do not have a right to legal privilege when trying to undermine the revenues of the state.” Would love to see where it says that in the judgement – please do share it with us
@alastair
I suggest you refer to the fact that George Osborne is today trying to ensure that banks sign up to a code of conduct that prevents tax avoidance.
Do not doubt for a minute that this may be the result of work undertaken by tax campaigners over the last few years against the abuses promoted by accountants
@Richard Murphy
why change the subject? Where is the quote from?
@alastair
I wrote it
It isn’t a quote
Can’t you tell – quotes begin ” and usually end the same way
I think you will find that there is abusive tax avoidance carried out by taxpayers without the promotion by accountants – or do you only want to counter abuse promoted by taxpayers. Maybe a look at the Barclays scheme will help you decide.