Pointless walks to dismal places
Posted by Christie Malry on November 25, 2010 at 10:22 am
Pointless walks to dismal places was the first album by enigmatic Leicester indie drone rockers Prolapse. It's not actually that good, if truth be told, at least compared to their singles or extraordinary live performances, although it has its moments. But, everyone must accept - it's a great title.
And it's how I feel when I survey the depressing array of sorry and pathetic excuses for public accountancy consultations that are out right now. Regulators and government are wasting our precious, precious time with consultations that cover ground that's already been adequately covered elsewhere, ask stupid, leading questions that aren't relevant, and the findings of which will, in any event, be soundly ignored anyway when it comes to the legislative process.
Take the EC Green Paper on audit. This covers a massive range of topics, from the role of audit, International Standards on Auditing, governance and independence of audit firms, audit supervision, market concentration, and smaller and medium sized practices. The Commission saw fit to give people only eight weeks to respond to all this. It's absolutely ridiculous. Eight weeks is barely enough to work out the parameters of the subject, let alone respond. It means many of the responses, if not all, will necessarily be half baked, and subjective, instead of fully considered and evidence-based. And that means the Commission's policy response can't hope to find the right answer; at best it will forge a consensus of popular views. At worst it will use the figleaf of the consultative process to justify what it wanted to do anyway.
And yesterday we get notification that the Treasury Select Committee wants to investigate tax policy principles. This is mere days after the Mirrlees Review findings have been published. OK, so it references the Mirrlees Review work. But it's surely invalid to give this very learned, academically robust, referenced work only the same status as, say, the drivel that we can look forward to Ritchie producing.
This comes back to something I've complained about before: the desperate need to consult properly. There are well established principles on how to consult properly. Some people do (for example, look how gingerly the Accounting Standards Board is treating the future of UK GAAP). But why do so many public bodies treat these principles, and with them - us - with such disrespect?
We deserve better. Every public body, without exception, should follow and honour the principles of good consultation. And in these constrained times, it would be nice if they could refrain from consulting on the same things over and over. We've addressed these issues already. Let's move on.
Written on my Android mobile phone. Article may be edited later.
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Pointless walks to dismal places
The same title could equally be used to describe the latest baseless speculation in an article linked to by the man whom some call the people’s favourite tax expert Richard Murphy (a more appropriate description perhaps being the most enthusiastic inspector of people’s stools). The article he links to (and presumably with which he agrees) wonders how the Middletons could be so wealthy and implies tax evasion in using a partnership. Murphy fails to point out that a partnership is what he recommends for a small business rather than a company precisely in order to prevent tax avoidance by others and is in fact the structure he uses for his own business (although his is limited liability).
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2010/11/25/how...
There is no rock under which Murphy will not wriggle. Quite disgusting.
I hadn't seen that - thanks.
Gilligan's article, and Murphy's drooling endorsement of it, is stupid. The insinuation is that they must have other sources of income, because commentators like Gilligan can't conceive of a business of that sort being that profitable. Whether there's tax avoidance is a red herring. Tax is *only* about 50%, yet the perceived trading shortfall is much larger. So Gilligan has to accept that either they're much better traders than he can imagine or that they have other sources of income that they want to keep to themselves.
Oh, and Ritchie can stick his snide Republican viewpoints up his arse. In Britain you're innocent until proven guilty. Ritchie would seem to prefer that you're a witch until the witchfinder says you're not.