The Guardian has got very hot and bothered about comments made by Adele, music superstar, about her personal tax bill:

Now, I love Adele. But that doesn't exactly endear you to her, does it? Let's look at it again.

 

"I'm mortified to have to pay 50%!" The Beatles had to pay 95% - as did all the highest earners under two successive governments (Wilson and Heath) in the mid-60s. George Harrison wrote a song about it, can't remember what it's called, sorry.

"I use the NHS." Keep paying your taxes then or it'll be gone.

 

"I can't use public transport any more." The rest of us plebs still have to. Adele, however, will never be short of the sponds for a private car to Shoreditch House from now until the end of time.

"Trains are always late." What does that matter when you don't use them? And they're not anyway.

 

"Most state schools are shit." Actually, according to the most recent Ofsted report for the UK, "Just over two thirds of schools at their most recent inspection were providing a good or better education for their pupils. Pupils' behaviour was good or outstanding in 86% of schools." Of course, if rich people stop paying their taxes then they will become shit.

"When I got my tax bill in, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire." Now, you have to assume this was a joke rather than the first bitter taste of a full-blown psychotic episode, but it's still upsetting to hear this musician I admire seems as greedy as the most moat-friendly, port-stained Tory grandee.

As you might expect from a grizzly old contrarian like me, I take the completely opposite point of view. I don't love Adele. I've never heard her music before. But I am deeply sympathetic with her point of view. Even if you were naive or stupid enough to believe that every last penny of taxation is spent on vital public services,  it's totally obscene that the state should demand half of anyone's income. Even if the rest of us think that some people are rich, there is simply no ex ante justification for requiring that anyone should give half of what they earn to the state. In Adele's case, even though she pays significantly more tax than the rest of us, she's unable to use any of the public services we force her to pay for. It's doubly unfair.

The left's attitude to taxpayers like Adele is absolutely inexcusable. We should worship our top earners, because they pay - by some margin - almost all of our income tax. Pick your figure - for example, the top 1% pay nearly 28% of all income tax. Were Adele to decide to make her home outside the UK, we would be much poorer for it. And judging by the ungrateful and downright rude tweets, she'd be justified in feeling rather unloved and unwanted by the disgusting self-interested scum that inhabit #ukuncut.

Anyway, if you would like to show your support for Adele (and,in the process, help increase her tax bill even further), you can buy her CD here.

Filed under: Current issues, Entertainment with tags adele, idiots, income tax, laffer curve, marginal tax rates, ukuncut
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At CiF, OReally observes:

Filed under: Other blogs with tags cambourne, comment is free, greens, guardian, idiots, oreally, quote of the day
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Ritchie writes

Alliance Boots... made a pre-tax profit of £944 million.

But the government gave them a £75 million tax credit by cutting their tax rate. No strings attached.

Ritchie wants to give you the impression that the government has piles of money lying around. So much so that, instead of spending it on the NHS or welfare benefits, they decided to cut a cheque to some wealthy Swiss investors.

This is, as you might expect, pretty far from the truth. Alliance Boots, like any other publicly accountable entity, discloses the impact of the future impact of tax on its accounts. And, like most companies, it has made accounting profits on which tax isn't yet due. Previously, it had provided a deferred tax liability at the known statutory corporation tax rate. But when that changed, it had to release some of the provision.

There's no tax "credit" involved. The tax isn't due on those profits yet. When it is, it'll be taxed at a lower rate than had previously been foreseen. Of course, if the rate goes up in the future, there will be an exceptional charge.

Ritchie's misrepresentation of facts really knows no bounds.

Filed under: Other blogs, Taxation with tags alliance boots, corporation tax, deferred tax, idiots, lies, richard murphy
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City AM reports that the ICAEW is now gunning for Edward Hunter, the Apprentice candidate who was first out of the boardroom on Tuesday night.

"There's no shame in being an accountant," said an outraged Gavin Aspden, director of qualifications at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, which accredited Hunter. "We remain the most popular breeding ground for future chief executives, with 14 of the current FTSE 100 CEOs qualifying with ICAEW, up from 11 last year."

Poor Edward. Yet am I the only one who finds the concept of a "breeding ground" for CEOs, well, rather icky? Are there perhaps a load of superinjunctions involving major business figures?

Filed under: Entertainment with tags apprentice, bbc, city am, edward hunter, ftse 100, gavin aspden, icaew, sex
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Ritchie writes today about tax simplification, in which he says:

... if tax is not an impediment ... but minimising compliance cost and maximising tax recovery to minimise the tax ga[p] so that the tax rate can be kept as low as possible for those honest companies who seek to comply with their obligations is a priority then of course one system that saves admin cost and eliminates transfer pricing problems is a massive boost to efficiency.

He is muddling up his concepts here. Because CCCTB, the quasi Soviet acronym used for the Common Tax Base, is nothing to do with the tax gap. So it won't, indeed can't, impact the tax gap.
You can tell this by looking at the draft directive on CCCTB. This is full of differences between local accounting, most of which will be IFRS based, and the way CCCTB will operate. So a company that behaves itself and follows the tax law to the letter will still have deferred tax in relation to items that are taxed at a different time to the way they're recognised in the accounts.

There will also continue to be reconciling items in the note to the accounts which shows how the notional tax on the accounting profits at the local statutory is related to the actual total tax charge. This is because countries will continue to set their own tax rates, which may be more or less than the home country rate.

And companies that operate outside the EU will still face transfer pricing issues in relation to that business. So the Vodafones and Barclays of this world will still have to remove smelly, ignorant UKuncut protestors from their high street stores. It's no wonder that UK business is totally underwhelmed by CCCTB.

Filed under: Other blogs, Taxation with tags barclays, ccctb, deferred tax, idiots, richard murphy, tax gaap, tax gap, transfer pricing, ukuncut, vodafone
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After last night's catastrophic performance from accountant Edward Hunter, I rang ICAEW first thing this morning to check which body he belongs to.

Yep, he's one of ours. This is a bit of a setback in my crusade to portray chartered accountants as hip, modern and relevant. But, as they say, you've got to roll with the punches.

Filed under: Entertainment, Institutes with tags apprentice, bbc, edward hunter, icaew, not zesty, roll with the punches
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So the ICAEW has published its annual review. Because the review is so profoundly dull, here are the two things every member wants to know:

How much is the subscription going up?

The proposal is for the subscription to go up by £10 from £300 to £310 for members living in the UK and Europe. You get a slight discount if you live outside this zone, but this discount is consciously being reduced over time.

This works out as an increase of 3.3%, which is marginally below price inflation, but probably above most members' wage inflation.

How much are the directors paying themselves?

The answer is in note 31 to the accounts (click the image below for a larger version).

Ignoring Mark Protherough, who wasn't a director for the whole year, the directors have received an overall increase in pay of 2.6%, representing bonuses at the same level as last year and an increase in base pay of 3.3% (source).

However, its 635 FTE staff were paid an average package of £56.7k each, compared to an average of £57.3k for 618 FTEs in 2009. That's a decrease of just over 1%.

Filed under: Institutes with tags bonuses, directors, icaew, salaries
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Behind the LinkedIn firewall, in the ICAEW group (so no link), Huw Baker says:

24 years ago, I came to work for a small practice and was the youngest practising CA in the town. I am still the youngest practising CA in the town.

Filed under: Current issues with tags eternal youth, huw baker, linkedin, practice, quote of the day, succession planning
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