This is my friend Prof Prem\u00a0Sikka\u00a0in the Guardian yesterday:<\/p>\n
[The Parliamentary Accounts Committee] laments HMRC's cosy relationship with large companies, but is silent on the cosiness with the tax avoidance industry. It notes that HMRC officials attended numerous lunches, dinners and receptions organised by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. The lavish hospitality is organised to promote private interests rather than enhance HMRC accountability.<\/p>\n
Many former ministers act as advisers to big accounting firms. For example, Labour grandee\u00a0Lord Peter Mandelson<\/a> has been an adviser to Ernst & Young. Former ministers\u00a0Lord Digby Jones<\/a> and Lord\u00a0Norman Warner of Brockley<\/a> have been advisers to Deloitte. Former Labour\u00a0home secretary Jacqui Smith<\/a> is a consultant for KPMG. Former Conservative minister\u00a0Sir Malcolm Rifkind<\/a> has been an adviser to PwC. Do such political links skew the relationship between government departments and the private sector?<\/p>\n
The links between the big accountancy firms and the Treasury attract no comments from the committee. For example, former PwC staffer\u00a0Mark Hoban<\/a> is the current financial secretary to the Treasury. Sir\u00a0Nicholas Montagu<\/a>, one-time chief of the Inland Revenue, joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2004 before moving on to other lucrative commercial appointments. PwC partner\u00a0Richard Abadie<\/a> has been the head of private finance initiative policy at the Treasury. In June 2009, former PwC partner\u00a0Amyas Morse<\/a> was appointed UK comptroller and auditor general and became responsible for directing the National Audit Office. Former PwC tax partner\u00a0John Whiting<\/a> is the director of the newly established Office of Tax Simplification, advising the government on simplification of tax laws.\u00a0Chris Tailby<\/a>, one-time tax partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers became head (until 2009) of anti-avoidance at HMRC. In July 2010, partners from KPMG, Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton and BDO became members of the government appointed\u00a0Tax Professionals Forum<\/a> and help shape the UK tax laws.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And he has only scratched the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
The revolving door is a massive problem, not least as many of these firms have had prosecutions or professional judgements against them for tax abuse in the last decade whilst at the same time they\u00a0operate\u00a0in all the major tax havens where they work day in and day\u00a0out\u00a0to undermine our\u00a0democracy\u00a0and that of other states by seeking to actively undermine\u00a0our\u00a0tax systems, laws and\u00a0regulations, all of\u00a0which, in my opinion, should debar them from\u00a0consulting\u00a0for the\u00a0government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is my friend Prof Prem\u00a0Sikka\u00a0in the Guardian yesterday: [The Parliamentary Accounts Committee] laments HMRC’s cosy relationship with large companies, but is silent on the
Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-4","category-hmrc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}