Ritchie has a good strop about the forthcoming Budget:

Daily I grieve on the disaster for the UK of Osborne getting power without having ever won a general election. Rarely has there been a man with so absent a moral compass in high office in this country. New Labour made serious errors – as Felicity Lawrence does not seek to hide, but Osborne is so much worse.

And in the meantime who will pay for this largesse to the largest corporations in the world? Why, ordinary people suffering beenfit cuts, increased taxes and a future with no hope, both here and abroad.

I can see why he's cross. Because if Osborne has convinced Parliament to change the law to reduce substantially the amount chargeable to tax, then it makes a right bloody mess of Ritchie's tax gap estimates. For, if Parliament has deemed that profits are not to be taxed here, then it makes it very hard to argue that they're avoiding tax by not having them taxed here.

Filed under: Other blogs, Taxation with tags george osborne, idiots, labour, parliament, richard murphy, tax avoidance, tax gap
63822 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F03%2Fthe-budget-and-tax-avoidance%2FThe+Budget+and+tax+avoidance2012-03-20+22%3A35%3A51Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D6382

From August 2013, households with children who have a higher rate tax payer will lose their right to child benefit. Over at money.co.uk, they've produced a guide that shows how people who are perhaps just over the threshold might be able to keep their child benefit via some reasonably simple steps, which are replicated here with permission:

• Pay into a pension. If you do it via salary sacrifice, this reduces your reported salary, and might push you down below the higher rate limit.
• Buy child care vouchers. Again, these count against your reported salary, so might push you down below the higher rate limit. But this route is clearly only worthwhile if you can actually make use of the vouchers at some point in the future.
• Register as a company. This won't work for everyone. But if you're self-employed then this might be worthy of consideration. You then get to set your own salary and take the rest as dividends. Note that HMRC can be sceptical of this arrangement when used in situations that are really employment.
• Change your working arrangements. If you reduce your hours to reduce your salary, this may bring you down below the higher rate limit.

The article also considers taking a pay cut or entering into other salary sacrifice arrangements, but dismisses them as less efficient than the ones above.

You can read the full article here.

Filed under: Other blogs, Taxation with tags child benefit, childcare vouchers, ir35, pensions, salary sacrifice
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Oh, this is fun

Of course, Oxford could also have heard from me on the subject but so broad minded is the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation that they’ve banned me from their events for asking awkward questions about things like their funding (the FTSE 100) and governance and why they’re quite so keen to promote tax havens without disclosing their conflicts of interest when doing so. So they just have others promote my ideas instead.

There are lies, damned lies and Ritchiebollocks. We covered this story before and exposed it for the tissue of lies that it is. Ritchie didn't get banned because he was asking awkward questions. He got banned because he wasn't asking questions at all, but sitting at the back of the room quietly. Then the patient folk at the Oxford Centre found that he'd been blogging all day and saying really rude things about the participants at the conference. So, not unreasonably, they said that he was no longer welcome if that was the way he was going to behave.

My source is a good one: one of the Centre's directors.

Even though Ritchie finds it hard to blog truthfully about tax, you'd think he might be able to tell the truth about his own bad manners, wouldn't you?

Filed under: Other blogs with tags idiots, lies, oxford university, pwned, richard murphy
63369 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F03%2Fritchie-is-still-lying-about-why-he-got-banned-from-oxford%2FRitchie+is+still+lying+about+why+he+got+banned+from+Oxford2012-03-13+23%3A17%3A46Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D6336

Kevin Sinclair (KevSinc):

just to clear up any confusion, first 8 articles viewed per month are free to view, then a small fee, less than £2 per week #accountancyage

Now that Accountancy Live is on a free/paid for model, it was probably only a matter of time before others joined in. Does this leave AccountingWeb and Economia as the only freebies? (Well, apart from teh bloggers, of course)

Posted from WordPress for Android. Post may be amended or reformatted later.

Filed under: Other blogs with tags accountancy age, accountancy live, accountingweb, meta
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There's a piece in today's City AM by me on the Barclays tax issue.

I argue that the real story isn't the broken promise over the bank code of conduct on tax, but that it demonstrates that disclosure of tax avoidance schemes works. So we don't really need to change the regulation substantially, as Ritchie has been peddling all day. 

Go read it.

Filed under: Other blogs with tags banks, barclays, city am, hmrc, meta, richard murphy, shameless self-promotion, tax avoidance
62015 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F02%2Fblowing-my-own-trumpet-city-am-on-barclays-and-tax%2FBlowing+my+own+trumpet%3A+City+AM+on+Barclays+and+tax2012-02-29+09%3A04%3A49Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D6201

Ritchie discloses his main sources of funding:

George Monbiot has an article on think tank funding in the Guardian today. He rightly says that think tanks should disclose who is funding them. I agree.

I seek to disclose my funding sources on this blog. But for the sake of clarity I expect my main sources of funding this year to be, in the order of their significance:

Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust – a Quaker foundation – for core funding on work related to tax and poverty.

The Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development  - in turn funded by the Norwegian government in the main – for work on country-by-country reporting.

The Socialist group of MEPs in the EU parliament for services supplied relating to the tax gap.

The TUC for services supplied on a range of issues.

The Tax Justice Network for services supplied, mainly for editorial issues.

Other bits and pieces such as BBC appearance fees, odd articles and reimbursement of expenses.

I also have a small income as a practicing accountant.

I wonder when the Taxpayers’ Alliance will be as transparent?

Only, when George Monbiot does it, he discloses the actual amounts received. Whereas Ritchie does not. This is of course completely at odds with his own demands of transparency from other organisations, such as in country by country reporting. So, Ritchie, when will you tell us actually how much you receive from the TUC, so we can assess whether your views are tainted by the amounts you receive from them?

My own transparency disclosure? I receive modest amounts of advertising income through Google Adsense. These are sufficient to cover the cost of the domain name and web hosting, with a few pennies left over. This blog has no other sources of income.

Et tu, Ritchie?

Filed under: Other blogs with tags george monbiot, idiots, meta, richard murphy, transparency, tuc
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jdc325 complains, with some justification, about accuracy in the press. Finding and pointing out stupid errors in print and online media represents a very rich vein for bloggers, including me.

Newspapers such as Dacre’s Daily Mail though, and I’m not making this bit up, are allowed to print pretty much any headline they like. As long as they make clear at some point that the headline is untrue. Perhaps in, say, paragraph 19 of the article.

This is problematic. Not everyone will read the whole article. A few will read right to the end, some will look at the pictures and maybe read the first couple of paragraphs. But everyone will have been exposed to the headline.

The Poynter Institute found that online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read; broadsheet participants read an average of 62 percent of stories they selected; and tabloid participants read an average of 57 percent. They also note that readers described as ‘scanners’ viewed headlines and other page display elements without reading much text. It’s clear that some people might be influenced by a headline without ever reading the attached article.

His main point is that discrepancies between the semantic content of a headline (and/or its accompanying photo, where applicable) may mislead a casual reader. However, I remain unconvinced that this risk should lead to regulatory intervention:

1. The newspapers want you to read the full article. They make their money from convincing advertisers that they have a loyal readership who spend their time poring over every single column inch. So they will reel you in via the headline and perhaps a nice photo. Yes, that's indeed precisely what jdc325 did, with deliberate irony, with his own article.
2. It's simply unreasonable to expect the headline to represent a synopsis of the entire article. It (plus picture, etc etc) is there to entice people towards the article. Necessarily, a headline will contain less information than the full article and, in order to meet the space limitations, will need to take shortcuts to get its point across. A short headline could never encapsulate all the semantic content of the full article. Indeed, in my view, expecting it to do so risks misunderstandings of #twitterjoketrial proportions.
3. The very idea that newspapers such as the Daily Express and Daily Mail intend to mislead their readership by publishing accurate articles under inaccurate headlines is - and I think I'm being as charitable as I can possibly be here - unproven.
4. It's unfair to summarise the Press Complaints Commission's judgment as leaving newspapers "free to print headlines which are misleading or inaccurate as long as there’s something in the article itself that contradicts the headline". In fact their judgment says that headlines must be considered in the context of the article as a whole. Unlike the obviously tongue-in-cheek headline and picture, it's not clear that jdc325 realises the bias in his own summary of the PCC's judgement. There are shades of Matthew 7:5 here.
5. And I'm not sure that we should be seeking regulatory intervention to deal with the risk that some readers might misunderstand an article by failing to read all of it. What sort of regulatory intervention could possibly address possible lack of comprehension of a varied readership?

Instead, I'd say we must stick with what we have. Let the PCC do what it does. It can improve, for sure, and one would expect the independent Lord Hunt to start making his mark. Let bloggers fill the space to clarify those areas that the PCC can't reasonably address. If nothing else, it gives us something to write about. Some day we might even find a way to attract people to read it!

Filed under: Other blogs, Regulation with tags daily express, daily mail, jdc325, lord hunt, philosophy, press complaints commission
60494 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F02%2Fnewspaper-headlines-vs-articles-a-response-to-jdc325%2FNewspaper+headlines+vs+articles+%28a+response+to+%40jdc325%292012-02-13+22%3A52%3A59Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D6049

Oliver Tant, by a country mile the best accountancy blogger ¹, has written about a KPMG scheme to help young people qualify as chartered accountants: 

our school leavers’ scheme is a step in the right direction.  It offers school leavers the opportunity to study for an accountancy and business degree at a respected university; in addition to paying tuition and accommodation fees for the degree course, we also pay a market rate salary to the graduate.  Six years after leaving school, our recruits will be fully qualified chartered accountants ideally placed to take advantage of opportunities in our global firm, or the many other career paths open to qualified accountants. 

The idea for the school leavers’ scheme came not purely for altruistic reasons but because we recognised it as a win-win solution for both the firm and the school leavers.  We want to work with teams drawn from the widest possible range of backgrounds – not just those fortunate enough to have been able to afford to pay to do a degree.  As well as my personal preference for diversity, it’s a fact that our clients are becoming more diverse and are looking for that diversity to be matched by the professional service firms they work with. 

This is, of course, good news. But I do wonder about his diversity claim. Chartered accountancy was always the profession of choice for clever, hard-working school-leavers. Philip Johnson, current FEE president, is a non-graduate chartered accountant. So is Martin Hagen, a former ICAEW president. And, while I was at KPMG, I knew partners there who had qualified by the non-graduate route.

But KPMG's scheme is different. They will be paying for school-leavers to get a degree as part of a period of learning that will include their chartered accountancy exams. That's obviously A Good Thing. But it's not obvious that it will increase diversity. Like my chartered accountant hero, Professor Michael Power, I'm a philosophy graduate. Other accountants I have known have degrees in languages, music, history, english, sciences, maths, theology and many other subjects besides. I know I draw upon my philosophy studies frequently, sometimes several times a week. For me, that's diversity, even though lots of accountants are dull, middle class, middle-aged men (yes, I count myself among that number).

The KPMG scheme may well help to bring in underrepresented groups, and is definitely to be applauded for that. But collectively, chartered accountants must remain alert to the possible risks to diversity from channeling so many future chartered accountants through a single route. More accountancy and business graduates may mean less philosophy and less music. That would be sad.

Filed under: Institutes, Other blogs with tags big 4, icaew, kpmg, martin hagen, michael power, music, oliver tant, philip johnson, philosophy
60227 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F02%2Fdiversity-in-the-accountancy-profession%2FDiversity+in+the+accountancy+profession2012-02-09+21%3A09%3A10Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D6022

Bloggers have been having lots of fun today picking apart a BBC article on the benefits cap, in which she distraught family said they would need to choose between "heating and eating" if the cap were introduced. But of course, their spending on cigarettes, alcohol and Sky TV budgets would remain.

Now, given my constant criticism of UKuncut and other idiotic tax campaigners, I have a reputation for being right wing. This isn't fair. I'm swayed not by dogma but by evidence. It just happens that, at this point in my life, I find that the evidence tends to support so-called right wing positions and tends to refute so-called left wing positions. But I remain open-minded as to what the evidence tells me.

So, here's the challenge. I cannot contemplate how anyone could expect strangers to support them through the tax system in excess of the cap. Clearly, this article fails to convince. So, can anyone justify, perhaps from their own budget, why the cap would be unworkable for them?

Because I can't envisage the situation where more than £26,000 is required, my view is that prima facie, the cap is a good thing. Only hard evidence from a real budget could convince me. So, where is it?

But that brings us to a serious concern about the original BBC article. Suppose there really is no evidence of the cruelty of the benefit cap. That would mean the BBC would have not been able to find a sympathetic family to review. In that case, one wonders why did the BBC commission the article in the first place. Just to point and laugh?

And if there is good evidence, why pick this family instead of an actual family in need? Either way, I'm pretty underwhelmed by the article, which smacks of profoundly lazy journalism. I'd like to believe in the kindness of the human spirit, but there's not much of it to be found in the way this article has been published.

Filed under: Current issues, Other blogs with tags bbc, budgeting, evidence, smoking, ukuncut, welfare benefits
59971 Comment »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F02%2Fin-which-i-wonder-about-that-bbc-article-on-the-benefit-cap%2FIn+which+I+wonder+about+that+BBC+article+on+the+benefit+cap2012-02-01+21%3A41%3A14Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D5997

It didn't take them long to start trotting out all sorts of nonsense about the proposed cap on benefits.

The worst hit, of course, are large families in the south-east, where rents are higher. Even in Tolworth, described by the Evening Standard as the "scrag end of Kingston borough", a four bedroom house will give you little change from £400 a week. Cutting housing benefit to £100 a week – which is broadly what the cap means if you have four children – makes life impossible. After rent, council tax and utilities, a family with four children would have 62p per person per day to live on. That is physically impossible.

Do you see what they've done there?

They've worked out the total benefits package that a family of four would get. Then they've made up some numbers for what this family would have to live on. Then they've complained that this would leave the family with only 62p per person per day.

Of course, this family doesn't have such a paltry amount. They've actually got £11.87 [(£26,000 / 6) / 365] per person per day to live on. And every single penny of that £11.87 comes from the good grace of working taxpayers.

Now it's true that rents are expensive. And that utilities are expensive, so a great deal of that £11.87 needs to be spent on those items. But they're also expensive for those who work. A family of four would need to earn a great deal more than £26,000 in order to actually bring home £26,000 because they have to pay tax on their income. And they would still face the same pressures of expensive housing and expensive utilities. It's an appalling insult to those who work to pretend that the real poverty is faced by those who are propped up to the tune of £11.87 every single day for each of their six non-working members.

And pretending that it's not £11.87, but is really only 62p, makes that insult a thousand times worse. Shame on you, Tim Leunig.

Filed under: Economics, Other blogs with tags guardian, housing benefit, idiots, poverty, tim leunig, welfare benefits
59452 Comments »http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F2012%2F01%2Fwhy-tell-lies-about-the-benefit-cap%2FWhy+tell+lies+about+the+benefit+cap%3F2012-01-22+21%3A10%3A47Christie+Malryhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.fcablog.org.uk%2F%3Fp%3D5945