{"id":41510,"date":"2018-04-25T12:13:47","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T11:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=41510"},"modified":"2018-04-25T12:13:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T11:13:48","slug":"the-inexorable-decline-in-the-quality-of-uk-accounting-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/04\/25\/the-inexorable-decline-in-the-quality-of-uk-accounting-data\/","title":{"rendered":"The inexorable decline in the quality of UK accounting data"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have continued to work on UK Companies House data. One of the trends I have noted is the rise in the submission of unaudited accounts to Companies House. The data that I have is as follows, all secured from Companies\u00a0House publications over the years noted:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/04\/25\/the-inexorable-decline-in-the-quality-of-uk-accounting-data\/screen-shot-2018-04-25-at-12-05-07\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-41511\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-41511\" src=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07-550x507.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"507\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07-550x507.png 550w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07-326x300.png 326w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07-768x707.png 768w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07-434x400.png 434w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Screen-Shot-2018-04-25-at-12.05.07.png 1394w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At one time (when I began my career) all limited company accounts had to be audited. There was a good reason: parliament had decided that limited liability was a privilege that should not be abused and audit was considered to limit the risk of that abuse.<\/p>\n<p>From the 90s onwards the audit requirement was steadily\u00a0reduced.\u00a0 As will be noted, it has now reached the point where 93.8%\u00a0 of all accounts submitted to Companies House are unaudited.<\/p>\n<p>There are\u00a0two questions to be asked. If this is the case how reliable is this data? And who knows?<\/p>\n<p>My suspicion is those with the power to regulate a) do not know and b) do not care.<\/p>\n<p>I do. So do those who lose as a result of the abuse of limited liability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have continued to work on UK Companies House data. One of the trends I have noted is the rise in the submission of unaudited<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2018\/04\/25\/the-inexorable-decline-in-the-quality-of-uk-accounting-data\/\"><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":[67,26,81,138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-accounting","category-auditing","category-companies-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41510","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=41510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}