{"id":14578,"date":"2012-03-12T15:42:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T15:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14578"},"modified":"2012-03-12T15:42:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T15:42:42","slug":"how-bent-is-the-uks-tax-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/03\/12\/how-bent-is-the-uks-tax-profession\/","title":{"rendered":"How bent is the UK’s tax profession?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There's a piece in Accountancy Age, published on Friday<\/a>, that says:<\/p>\n

Most advisors would support a general tax amnesty, which they would communicate with many of their clients.<\/p>\n

An online survey of 97 firms by Crowe Clark Whitehill found more than three-quarters favoured the introduction of a general disclosure facility. Some 79% of advisors would mention such an amnesty to at least 20 of their clients.<\/p>\n

The three most important features that would need to underpin the amnesty would be guaranteed immunity from prosecution (33%), a low fixed\u00a0rate<\/a>\u00a0penalty (31%) and a time to pay procedure for clients that required it (14%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The idea of a general\u00a0disclosure\u00a0facility\u00a0has been mooted as\u00a0H M Revenue & Customs has been offering\u00a0targeted\u00a0ones\u00a0aimed\u00a0at various sectors. What worries me at this moment is not the principle of the facility (although I have serious reservations) but what this says about the state of the UK\u00a0accountancy\u00a0and tax profession? As I've just said to the Telegraph on this issue:<\/p>\n

What's really worrying about this\u00a0proposal\u00a0is that 79% of the\u00a0accountants\u00a0surveyed would mention a general disclosure\u00a0facility\u00a0to at\u00a0least\u00a020 of their\u00a0clients. They, presumably, would only do that if they suspected\u00a0those\u00a0clients may be tax evading. But if they do suspect that they're legally required to report the fact now<\/a>, and appear not to be doing so.<\/p>\n

There's a culture of\u00a0complicity\u00a0here that suggests \u00a0there's a massive problem of tax evasion- but that the first issue will be making sure it's the accountants who are brought to book, and\u00a0not\u00a0just their clients. And if the\u00a0problem\u00a0is as big as it seems the idea of an amnesty is\u00a0completely\u00a0unacceptable: why should crime be rewarded with easy terms, no\u00a0prosecution\u00a0and no day in court? Not least for the accountants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People often ask me how there could be a tax evasion gap as big as the one I suggest for the UK, which I think is some \u00a370 billion in total.\u00a0It looks like the answer is that it's easy for it to be that big - and the UK's tax advisors\u00a0know\u00a0where to look. And it's a damning indictment of them that this is the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a piece in Accountancy Age, published on Friday, that says: Most advisors would support a general tax amnesty, which they would communicate with many
 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":[67,26,14,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-accounting","category-corruption","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578","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=14578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}