{"id":23687,"date":"2014-01-13T09:53:16","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T09:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=23687"},"modified":"2014-01-13T09:53:16","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T09:53:16","slug":"when-kpmg-talk-transparency-what-they-deliver-is-opacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/01\/13\/when-kpmg-talk-transparency-what-they-deliver-is-opacity\/","title":{"rendered":"When KPMG talk transparency what they deliver is opacity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KPMG have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kpmgannualreview.co.uk\/assets\/pdf\/KPMGTransparencyReport2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">issued a Transparency Report for 2013<\/a>. It begins with this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The press is full of evidence of a breakdown\u00a0in trust between business and society.\u00a0High pro\u00ef\u00ac\u0081le collapses during the \u00ef\u00ac\u0081nancial crisis,\u00a0concern over companies\u2019 approaches to tax\u00a0planning, corporate pro\u00ef\u00ac\u0081ts while price increases\u00a0put pressure on household budgets, stories of\u00a0high-cost unregulated lenders, the perception\u00a0of a widening gap between executive pay\u00a0including bonuses and the wages\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0workforce \u2014 the list goes on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, I expected them to address the issues raised, and a few more besides (like\u00a0International Financial Reporting Standard being illegal in UK law) but no, they then said:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.48.40.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23688\" alt=\"Screen shot 2014-01-13 at 09.48.40\" src=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.48.40.png\" width=\"496\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.48.40.png 496w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.48.40-300x75.png 300w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.48.40-200x50.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 496px) 100vw, 496px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that was the ned of the references to tax.<\/p>\n<p>I look forward to their tax and transparency report in that case. It should make fascinating reading. In the meantime, their existing report wins an award for opacity and not transparency because it does not say what it is about, and that's pretty staggering for a report with the title they've given it, especially when the cover implies it applies to more than their audit operation:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-23689\" alt=\"Screen shot 2014-01-13 at 09.51.13\" src=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13.png\" width=\"559\" height=\"263\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13.png 799w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13-300x140.png 300w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13-639x300.png 639w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Screen-shot-2014-01-13-at-09.51.13-200x93.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 559px) 100vw, 559px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KPMG have issued a Transparency Report for 2013. It begins with this: The press is full of evidence of a breakdown\u00a0in trust between business and<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/01\/13\/when-kpmg-talk-transparency-what-they-deliver-is-opacity\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kpmg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23687","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=23687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}