{"id":19038,"date":"2013-01-25T09:51:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T09:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=19038"},"modified":"2013-01-25T09:51:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T09:51:18","slug":"the-icaews-wrong-to-attack-cameron-of-course-accountants-do-participate-in-aggressive-tax-avoidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/01\/25\/the-icaews-wrong-to-attack-cameron-of-course-accountants-do-participate-in-aggressive-tax-avoidance\/","title":{"rendered":"The ICAEW’s wrong to attack Cameron: of course accountants do participate in aggressive tax avoidance"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Cameron's comments about accountants\u00a0yesterday\u00a0in his speech on tax avoidance <\/a>has created a hostile reaction from the\u00a0Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Accountancy Live<\/a> has reported:<\/p>\n

The UK accountancy profession has been left reeling by Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s outspoken attack on the industry.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the PM dubbed the profession part of a \u201ctravelling caravan of lawyers, accountants and financial gurus\u201d engaged in tax avoidance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why anyone in accountancy should have been left reeling by this is baffling: the statement is true; these things don't happen by themselves. But it's clear that\u00a0Michael Izza, the ICAEW\u2019s chief executive, who is at Davos is not happy. He is reported to have said:<\/span><\/p>\n

As a profession we spend a great deal of time working with policy makers to achieve this balance. Which was why I was disappointed to hear the prime minister again dismiss accountants, this time as an \u201carmy\u201d of avoiders.<\/span><\/p>\n

We don\u2019t recognise that description. Our members do not support illegal tax evasion or the kind aggressive tax avoidance that we believe to be unethical. In fact, an effective accountancy and finance profession can and does help solve many of the problems the Prime Minister wants to address.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added:<\/p>\n

Professional accountants everywhere are helping their clients pay the right amount of tax to the right governments at right time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know and respect\u00a0Michael\u00a0Izza, but on this\u00a0occasion\u00a0have to say he has just got this wrong. As example, the transcript of the hearing before the House of Lords I attended on Wednesday will show that Bill Dodwell of Deloitte, who was also giving evidence, said he could not see how Starbucks were avoiding tax in using the\u00a0arrangements\u00a0they did in the UK.<\/p>\n

Now if Michael is agreein with Bill that there was no tax avoidance then his comment is justified.<\/p>\n

If on the other hand the Prime Minister is right in\u00a0correctly\u00a0reflecting\u00a0the mood of the country that the schemes used were obviously abusive tax avoidance, which the Public Accounts Committee concluded as do I, then both Bill Dodwell and Michael Izza are wrong because it's very clear that armies of accountants to create\u00a0such\u00a0schemes, account for them, submit tax returns for them, and justify them.<\/p>\n

And let's be blunt about it: the profession has got its judgement on the rights and wrong of doing that seriously wrong. Now it's been\u00a0rumbled\u00a0there's no point spitting fire; now is the time for a little remorse and real change. And candidly to pretend that accountants aren't part of the\u00a0problem\u00a0on this issue is just asking for trouble when so very clearly they are at the heart of the issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Cameron’s comments about accountants\u00a0yesterday\u00a0in his speech on tax avoidance has created a hostile reaction from the\u00a0Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Accountancy
 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":[67,16,99,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-ethics","category-icaew","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038","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=19038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}