{"id":24974,"date":"2014-06-02T08:29:34","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T07:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=24974"},"modified":"2014-06-02T08:29:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T07:29:34","slug":"why-are-uk-universities-ignoring-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/02\/why-are-uk-universities-ignoring-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are UK universities ignoring tax?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Franklin once said \u00a0that only two things in life are certain. One is death, and the other taxation. \u00a0You would not, however, know this \u00a0from looking at the courses offered by the UK's universities, \u00a0which I have happened to do.<\/p>\n

Searching on the Which? University<\/a> site I looked at just three subjects. Given Franklin's suggestion the first I looked at was \u00a0medicine, \u00a0given that this is a subject pretty directly related to the issue of death. I got this result:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I searched tax \u00a0because in this case it did not seem that any other term was appropriate; the word itself would, I thought, do. I got this result:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Just in case they did not cover the 'social sciences' I checked accountancy instead:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

So, this was no mistake: UK universities really do ignore tax. \u00a0Searching a little harder, I did eventually find that Bournemouth University offer an undergraduate course in accountancy and taxation, and of course there are some universities who offer places for postgraduate study, particularly in taxation law, and the occasional Ph.D. But, overall, what is staggering is the extent to which UK universities completely ignore the issue of taxation as if it is of no consequence to society at large.<\/p>\n

That gives rise to three questions. First of all, why does the government allow that? Secondly, why is there no demand for such courses? And, thirdly, given the importance of tax isn't something being done to change this absurd situation so that we might, in the future, have some people who actually understand how tax works, because right now we are desperately short of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Franklin once said \u00a0that only two things in life are certain. One is death, and the other taxation. \u00a0You would not, however, know this
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