There is another peril lurking in wait for an unsuspecting, ham-fisted accountant. Following the financial crisis, we have seen massive growth in, er, the public sector. See, I can type. But many of my colleagues can't. Here, for your pleasure, are three accountancy bodies who might wish they were more careful:

In third place, it's the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. Don't you think they would get their own name right?

In second place, it's the ACCA. The ACCA have a pretty poor record when it comes to misspelling 'public' as this google search should demonstrate. But here's my particular favourite: smack bang in the middle of the title.

But leading the way it's the ICAEW. In a piece explaining how their disciplinary hearings work, they say the following:

[Because] details of the hearing will already have been published on this website, members of the pubic may be there

The icing on the cake is the next sentence:

and your oral application may be refused

So childish, I know, but when your strapline is Inspiring confidence, making sure you can avoid the two killer accounting typos ought to be a higher priority.

Filed under: Entertainment, Technology with tags acca, cipfa, icaew, pwned
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If you're a chartered accountant, you'll have welcomed the advent of newer and better word processing and e-mail programs. As well as making our working lives easier, they have a life-saving feature that can spare you from utter humiliation.

The feature that auto-corrects text as you type.

Every accountant I know has gone into the options screen and entered in that typo so that it automatically changes back to 'accountant' and spares their blushes.

Occasionally you come across a few howlers in the field. Such as this one I stumbled across today. The poor Irish lambs appear to have been hacked too. They have a thing or two to learn about safe hex.

Filed under: Entertainment, Technology with tags hacked, jobsfinance.ie, pwned
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... or so a story posted on Accountancy Age claimed today.

it's been pulled now, after I pointed it out, but the original story can still be seen on Google cache.

Facebook could cost accountancy firms millions of pounds
Viruses from social networking sites could put firms at risk of closure
Written by Rachael Singh

More than 93% of accountancy firms will go bust within a year due to viruses from social networking sites, an IT expert has warned.

The industry specialist warns firms could lose millions every year due to complications from sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

The closures could occur if firms did not have access to their data for ten days or more due to an IT disaster which are increasingly caused by viruses from social networking sites.

Fewer than half of accountancy firms back-up their data every day putting themselves at further risk.

Jason Fitzgerald, sales and marketing director at technology consultancy Certus IT, said: “These sites are easily manipulated, and by simply accepting an invitation or clicking on a link or application that is sent through these sites, an employee could infect an entire network with a virus, which, if there is no appropriate security or back-up in place, could cause the loss or theft of a company’s data."

He adds that a company recently suffered an IT disaster for four days due to a virus downloaded from a dating website.

“Accountancy is an industry particularly at risk. Should confidential client information be stolen from computer files as a result of malware from these sites and poor internet security, the consequences could be very costly,” he said.

Hunting around on google a bit more, it turns out that Jason Fitzgerald has been hawking this story and the same dodgy statistics elsewhere as well. But shouldn't an accountant's professional scepticism have led the Age to pick up on this ridiculously sensationalist article?

Filed under: Other blogs, Technology with tags accountancy age, certus it, idiots, jason fitzgerald, social networking, viruses
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In his post UK superfast broadband, Richard Murphy asks whether big companies know what they want. This is because businesses say they want more investment in broadband infrastructure, but don't want to pay for it themselves, nor do they support the proposed broadband levy.

Richard believes that tax compliance means four elements: right amount, right place, right time and coincidence of substance and form.

Perhaps business believes that taxing everybody equally is a bad way to ensure that everyone in the country can have superfast broadband. It certainly doesn't meet the 'right place' test above.

I see no reason at all why someone who lives in, say, a shed in Norfolk shouldn't be prepared to pay more compared to the millions of people who live in more urban areas, and accept the benefits and disadvantages that brings. A flat tax unfairly impacts people in cities compared to those in the country. And that's why it should be opposed.

Filed under: Current issues, Other blogs, Taxation, Technology with tags broadband, idiots, richard murphy
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Over at the ICAEW's IT Counts, the terribly nice Simon Hurst ponders what the world would be like if we tolerated an electricity service as 'bad' as our current ADSL provision. Simon doesn't think it's acceptable for broadband providers to provide a service that gets worse the further away from an exchange you are, or that is fast in cities and slow in the countryside. He supposes that the new landline levy may be the answer.

His conclusion is wrong. There's simply no reason why people who choose to live in the city, accepting all of the advantages and disadvantages that brings, should have to pay more tax to subsidise one of the disadvantages of living in the countryside. If you want a slower pace of life, some peace and quiet, and a beautiful view, move to the country. If you want fast internet access, move to a city.

On top of which, the landline levy will surely only hasten the demise of the landline at home, in favour of other technologies. That's a price that's certainly not worth paying.

Filed under: Current issues, Taxation, Technology with tags broadband, icaew, simon hurst, tax
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