Prof Prem Sikka is giving the opening welcoming address at the Tax Justice Network conference at Essex University.
His theme is accounting and human rights.
His point is that when he began to research the link between these two subjects he discovered, based on a literature search of accounting journals, that the two subjects had never been discussed.
And when he submitted a paper on this theme to an academic journal the response was 'what's the link between the issues'.
No wonder the International Accounting Standards Board has no idea why so many NGOs are demanding country-by-country reporting.
And yet, as Prem says, and it's a view I share, accounting is all about the exercise of control over lives. The link is fundamental, and yet denied by the neoliberal elite.
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:
Exactly. Developed in the region of Lombardy, I believe, accounting is notable because the banks profess to use the same kind of accounting the rest of us do. This is despite the fact that since they can create legal tender or by offering credit cards delegate that authority to third parties like the public at large and get us to do it for them under the illusion that somehow this represents a loan that must be paid back, it’s entirely inappropriate that they should. There’s columns for this and there’s columns for that, but deceivingly there’s no “We made this money up out of thin air and any pretence we didn’t is purely to mislead you” column. Accounting is deceitful and fraudulent by its very nature and from what I can gather it was designed that way. It’s about time this aspect of accounting got a whole lot more publicity
(Now tell me he didn’t mean anything at all like that)
BB 🙂
Pleased that you have discovered human rights Prem. Some of us have been trying to make the link with the whole finance centre charade for years. Why is it so difficult – even now after all the meetings, discussions, articles and battles – to cross that great divide between professionals and the real economic problems and their ethical origins?
Why the mental block? Is wealth so compulsive and corrosive? Legions of devoutly religious people so miserably failing to apply the most basic human rights standards in the finance sector. Why?
Do tell me Prem. What is the missing link?
Dear Tom,
The paper can be downloaded from the conference website
http://visar.csustan.edu/aaba/taxworkshop2011.html
Similar with customs duty. The free trade lobby always talks about ‘savings’ from ‘trade facilitation’. But those ‘savings’ to transnational corporations’ are from reduced customs-take and from jobs going in ‘streamlining’ trade.
For many small countries, where there is little tax-take from populations that have no money, customs duties can be up to 50% of what the govt gets to provide any services
That’s in goods.
Services liberalisations are another issue altogether. Very much now about moving cheap labour around the world, for corporate benefit. Plenty of ‘savings’ there too. To whose cost?