Sometimes a lobbyist's message is so wrong you almost want to scream. Take this, reported in the FT this morning:
Legal and accountancy businesses and their workers generated £15.5bn in taxes last year, according to a report that illustrates the scale of the combined sector's role in the UK economy. In all, 60,470 firms – ranging from the Big Four accountants and the elite “magic circle” law firms to small businesses and sole traders – employed 693,000 people in the UK in various roles, from partners to back-office workers. That amounts to almost a quarter of all legal and accountancy employees in the EU, making Britain the largest employer in the sector, ahead of Germany and France.
What's the message PWC are trying to impart. It appears to be implicit in this comment:
This total amounted to 2.5 per cent of receipts in the UK in the year to the end of June 2016, the report said, or a sum roughly equivalent to what the government spent on police services in the same year.
And the message? It's very clearly that we wouldn't have the police unless accountancy and legal firms paid for them.
I have news for PWC. They have a lot to learn about tax. They could start by reading this.
The reality is that tax does not pay for government spending. That's paid for with new currency created by the Bank of England for the government on overdraft. Tax clears the overdraft. To the extent that tax may be insufficient for that task bonds do the rest, which if evidence that tax does not pay for spending is needed is surely certain proof on the issue.
But PWC ignore this. Maybe they don't even know it. Either way what they pretend is that we need accountants and lawyers to sell tax abuse at a profit so that we can afford the police.
It's so illogical surely anyone can see through the absurdity of this? Except, apparently, one of the countries leading management consultants. But then, management consultants have always sold myths and dogma that clients have wanted to hear and in this case PWC's client is the City of London. They'll be lapping this nonsense up as evidence of what jolly good and generous fellows they are.
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An ex-senior partner of PWC is an old friend; it’s a bit simplistic I know, but I have argued with him that what they call ‘Tax and Advisory’ is pretty much tax avoidance and evasion. Assuming that clients are prepared to pay a percentage of the tax avoided of say 10-20% as the fee, PWC alone are supporting the avoidance/evasion of $45-90bn worldwide. That’s just one firm.
I would love to see that percentage figure set off against an estimate of how much tax avoidance and evasion they ‘manage’.
And in typical PWC fashion, I expect they have included tax for which they are collection agents (PAYE income tax and ee’s NIC and VAT) in their £15.5bn figure. Can anyone confirm whether these taxes are included? – FT article behind a paywall.
They are included
Of course….
I’m guessing that the clue is in the phrase “and their workers”? So it’s not like they are trying to make a false claim.
But what PwC are doing is creating thousands of jobs. And jobs that give great lifestyles to its owners and workers.
You may not like the big houses and big cars and sharp suits that buys but their workers do.
Happy employers. Happy workers. happy clients.
And a few moaning minnies on the sidelines. Or perhaps a better analogy would be sat at the back of the stand with an impaired view of the action?
Read my recent work on PWc and reflect on why they are so secretive if everyone is so happy
I wonder if PwC are secretive because they don’t like people prodding around in their private tax affairs? I know that they publish in their accounts the total tax the partners pay but they won’t publish their own tax returns so what does that prove? What are they hiding? We’ll never know.
Go and read what I have written
You are looking very much like a time waster
Amazing that one of the largest firms of tax advisors in the world doesn’t understand tax while some bloke who works on his own out of his bedroom does.
That the same bloke understands more about economics than every economist who has lived before him does is even more amazing.
No wonder you were able to claim on live radio that you had “changed the world”
Do you know how change happens?
And yes on CbcR I have changed the world of tax reporting, which is what I referred to
What have you done but troll?
I thought CbcR was developed for the extractive industries?
I mean, jolly good idea to spread it out to all areas but hardly a ‘new’ accounting concept? It pretty much boils down to “publish tax return information”.
The extraterrestrial industries version was developed by me too
It was a variant that got more traction that the main theme at fist
And it is nothing like publish your tax return
“And it is nothing like publish your tax return”
How does it differ? A tax return seeks to identify activities in a country that should be taxed there.
How does that differ from CbcR? And if CbcR doesn’t identify taxable activities, what’s it for anyway?
I suggest you go and do some reading
If the two were the same it would not have taken two years at the OECD negotiating it
There is. Category here on CBCR
You were involved in setting up EITI and the Global Awaking report of Angola? They don’t give you any credit at all.
Throughout the accountancy profession they are given the credit for inventing the concept of CbCR.
I thought that all you did was, along with others, suggest that they take their invention and widen its scope.
Seems mean of EITI and Global Awakening to be stealing your glory.
EITI Is not CBCR
EITI was the reyslt of Publish What You Pay
WHen PWYP realised how bad the EITI accounting system, created by KPMG, was the adopted CBCR
See https://www.globalwitness.org/en-gb/archive/extracting-transparency/
This PwC thing. If we can print our own money, does it matter how much tax PwC does or doesn’t pay?
There’s not much inflation at the moment.
And if our Government is still suffering the delusion that it needs to tax in order to spend, how is a PwC £ worth any more or less than anyone else’s?
Would you rather PwC were based in Eire? That all the jobs went there? That the tax extracted from PwC in the UK reduced to zero?
Yes it matters because of inequality, because of abuse and because of the politics based on a falsehood