According to a BBC report from the inquest, Cumbrian multiple murderer Derrick Bird was worried that he might be taken off to prison at a meeting with his accountant scheduled for the day of the shootings.
He had apparently not paid any tax for 15 years although he was a self-employed taxi driver. In fact he had more than enough savings to settle any tax etc due from the tax investigation, in the opinion of his accountant. The accountant had been recommended by his solicitor - one of the people he murdered.
David
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Ah, but ....
Did he have enough savings to pay the anticipated confiscation order?
With kind regards
Clint Westwood
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I saw this report - it does make you think of the potential responsibility we have.
More importantly, it makes you wonder about your safety if filing a money laundering report. Can we all be certain that our clients are not potential Derrick Bird's ?
Let us contrast the reality and the message...
David - I accept what you say about the realistic prospects for the case was that it would be settled as you describe, primarily through a demand for unpaid taxes, interest and penalties which he could have paid from the money in the bank.
However, that is far different from the letters sent out by HMRC which threaten exactly the thing that Derek Bird was afraid of, namely being returned to Gaol.
In this instance while the message and the reality were very different, it was the message that implanted itself within Derek Bird's twisted mind. I don't believe that it was the deciding factor in him going out on a killing spree, but it certainly acted as a key part of his thinking in the dreadful decisions of that day.
We need to be very careful here though. I recall on the day after the incident the AWeb elves had to pull a couple of posts which were deemed to have crossed the boundaries.
In summary, if HMRC's missives were more communications than threats, perhaps (just perhaps), some or all of those that became victims of this murderous idiotic criminal would be alive today. I say no more than that.
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In summary, if HMRC's missives were more communications than threats, Posted by frustratedwithhmrc on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 17:21
However. "if" they are found to be major causative factor (albeit in the mind of someone possibly already a little unstable) then there are potential consequences .....................
I'm reading too much into all of this.
I find the communications put forth by HMRC to be generally poor, but in the event of delinquency (real or percieved) by HMRC, downright threatening. It is this which has discoloured my view of the case in the light of very little evidence either way.
I apologise. As the coroner would no doubt say "We need to deal with these circumstances based upon fact, not interpretation".
On that point, I have nothing further to add, other than to say that David, with his usual forensic approach to the topic is probably correct.
We all (in the profession) forget
that we are "sanitized" with regard to the level and threat of HMRC communications and, in the various tones in which they arrive. This chap was not. Given the tragic circumstances of this case I will not proffer an opinion of what might, or might not, have been in the mind of the offender. What I will say, however, is that, as C-D has inferred here, on numerous occasions, accountants were never intended to be unpaid Police officers and, the ramifications of the Money Laundering Regulations, need to be considered very carefully, as the outcome of a simple suspicion could have similar consequences in the future. People who have deep fears, do very strange things and the human psyche needs to be treated with the utmost respect.
Stretched sympathy!
Maybe I'm just callous but, although I would agree that sending 'threatening' letters to, say, an old lady who forgot to decare her bank interest for a couple of years is clearly over the top, if ever anyone deserved a more threatening approach, surely it's somone who deliberately evaded paying tax on their income for 15 years and only owned up because HMRC caught him out? And given that he seems to have been involved in filling in tax credit forms on which he declared his taxable income, it doesn't seem likely that he was in complete ignorance about the tax system and didn't know he had to declare it - and he certainly wasn't unable to afford the tax - with £50k in the bank he clearly wasn't struggling to make ends meet.
Anyway, as has been said, given that he didn't target his accountant or the tax office, it seems unlikely this was a major factor in him losing it.
Cathy
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Anyway, as has been said, given that he didn't target his accountant or the tax office, it seems unlikely this was a major factor in him losing it.
Cathy
Posted by cathygrimmer on Fri, 04/03/2011 - 11:37
Sorry Cathy but I disagree.
I've seen first hand the effects of being accused. I've had a client falsely accused of rape commit suicide because of the stress. Being guilty or innocent is irrelevent. Quite clearly this was a man who couldnt handle the stress of being accused.
I have to say that HMRC's letters are extremely threatening and of dubious legality as I've outlined in another thread.
Cathy - I agree
I agree with Cathy. Some people, including criminals and anti-social people, do not deserve our sympathy. The victims are the ones who need our sympathy, but very rarely receive it.
As David said, we do not know the reason for his killing spree, it could have been fear of punishment, it could have been mental illness, it could have been lots of things all lumped together, but we will never know for sure and making unfounded assumptions just causes further disagreement.
We do know he killed his brother, and his solicitor, but not his accountant or anyone at HMRC. This does not necessarily mean he didn't want to kill them, but it does mean they were not his priority.
What does annoy me is that so many people look to 'defend' criminals and anti-social people and look to blame others, rather than the person who commits such an atrocity. If he was mentally ill why didn't his doctor, or family, help him? Does anyone here know for sure what advice he received from his accountant? Why should anyone be 'responsible' for this mans actions?
I am not defending HMRC, neither am I blaming them for this mans actions.
My sympathies lie wholly with his victims.
I'm with Cathy and Shirley
If we take this to an extreme, are we saying that nobody can ever accuse anyone of anything for fear of how the accused might react?
-- Kind regards Andy
@ Andy
That's exactly what I was going to say!
Anyway, presumably the worst they could have accused him of was not declaring his tax for 15 years - which was true. Let's save our sympathy for those who deserve it.
I might add, that I have seen quite a few clients (and potential clients who thought they needed my help but didn't really) in my time getting very worked up over extremely bland non-accusatory letters from HMRC. Some people just can't deal with letters from authority and read the worst into the most innocuous of comments - but we can't exempt them from the system because of this. Doesn't seem to affect them when they are claiming benefits/tax credits though!
I for one would like HMRC to pursue tax cheats as diligently as possible - the way I see it is that it's my money. When a tradesman suggests I pay cash and he'll charge me less, I mention that I'm a tax specialist (but I don't mention that I don't work for HMRC!).
I think I may be in an unforgiving mood today. Good thing I'm going for some retail therapy this afternoon!
Cathy
Hear hear
We all have stresses, anxieties and triggers, and not everyone is able to manage them, but to blame HMRC in this is like blaming the cake shop owner here...
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/03/police-hunt-for-...
There's more out than in, as my mother used to say...
Egg Shells
. Some people just can't deal with letters from authority and read the worst into the most innocuous of comments - but we can't exempt them from the system because of this. Doesn't seem to affect them when they are claiming benefits/tax credits though!
Posted by cathygrimmer on Fri, 04/03/2011 - 13:30
I'm afraid you must allow for how people may react.
In law there is a doctrine known as the eggshell skull rule that says the wrongdoer takes the victim in the condition he/she finds him. If a defendant negligently injures someone, the defendant is responsible for all the consequences, whether they were foreseeable or not. The rule is applied in tort and criminal cases involving a plaintiff in a vulnerable, weakened state or suffering from a medical condition.
In other words, in the hypothetical case we are considering, "if" it was shown that HMRC's letters had "pushed him over the edge" (something we will probably never actually know) then HMRC would be responsible in law. A defence that a "normal" person would not have been driven to such measures is no excuse, they should have known that they might do so if the recipient was already vulnerable.
In other words we must assume everyone to be potentially vulnerable unless we can prove otherwise.
Please clarify
A defence that a "normal" person would not have been driven to such measures is no excuse, they should have known that they might do so if the recipient was already vulnerable.
I don't understand! Does this mean that if we treat people as normal, and inadvertantly miss the fact that someone is 'vulnerable' or mentally unstable, that we would be guilty of causing their unsocial actions?
Is this another case of it 'always being someone else's fault' for not knowing things they couldn't reasonably be expected to know, and then being used as a scapegoat?
Is there any method whereby you can guarantee the person you are communicating with is not vulnerable, or mentally unstable?
Where does it end?
"In other words we must assume everyone to be potentially vulnerable unless we can prove otherwise." Posted by cymraeg_draig
So do we now have to be careful of what we say in the office in case a person is vulnerable?
A slightly different slant
I also have a lot of sympathy for Cathy's position, but that sympathy is somewhat constrained by my opinion that HMRC systems are quite simply not sufficiently reliable for their DMU or subcontracted cohorts to have the required confidence in the accuracy of the debts that they are pursuing that would be necessary to justify the temper of their approach.
To send an initial letter to the taxpayer within 3 weeks of a due date advising of an intent to impound and sell their assets in order to pay a debt which a significant proportion of time is not even due does not, to my mind, strike an appropriate balance. I realise that this issue may not be particularly applicable to Derrick Bird.
With kind regards
Clint Westwood
Could be an interesting excuse though :)
When Gordy called the lady a bigot, and some football guy made lewd suggestions to the women who was 'miking him up', could they have given him a good bop on the head (or a good kneeing) and then claim they were vulnerable so he was responsible for their assault?
I can see the world opening up for me if I can just be a bit more vulnerable.........
NOTE: ..... this is just banter ... or wishful thinking ... decide for yourself :)
Eggshell skull
No the egg shell skull only means that you are liable for all consequences (even unforeseeable ones) if you do something wrong, so the cake-shop keeper is not liable for distress or injury caused to the angry customer as running out of stock is not a tort.
Under Ms. Harman's equality legislation it does perhaps mean exa
An extreme analogy being that if a client (or even just a lost soul looking for directions) walks into the reception of your office and tells an off colour joke about for instance Indians and your receptionist takes offence because she is of Indian origin, she is entitled to bring an action against her employer under the equality act as she has been subject to an actionable "offense" under the act.
However, this moves away from the reality of the real world in which the multiple murderer Derrick Bird existed. For anyone to have done what he did, they are clearly insane. We worry about various actions that may or may not have contributed to the "straw that broke the camels back".
Ultimately, any society contains it's insane murderers, sometimes the mental health services identifies them and sometimes it does not. As liberal minded people we are looking to find a cause that might be dealt with, but we are trying to place ourselves, with our rational perspective, in the same position as a madman to see the world from his perspective and prevent this sort of tragedy from happening again.
This is a laudable attitude, but in this circumstance we are torturing ourselves for no purpose. Yes - HMRC's letters can be offensive and have caused unnecessary fear in our clients over the years, but to blame it on this is to excuse what this psychopath has done.
It is probable that we will never know for sure what the trigger was that led to this brutal massacre. There may be lessons that can be learned about how various parties handled this convicted criminal in the days leading up to the incident and the incident itself.
ALL BLAME SHOULD BE FIRMLY ON THE HEAD OF THE ACCUSED DERRICK BIRD
Shirley
I don't understand! Does this mean that if we treat people as normal, and inadvertantly miss the fact that someone is 'vulnerable' or mentally unstable, that we would be guilty of causing their unsocial actions?
Posted by ShirleyM on Fri, 04/03/2011 - 14:31
In a word - YES you could be.
The "eggshell" reference goes back to a case where the offender assaulted a victim. The blow was not particularly hard, and if done to you or I, we would probably not even have had a headache. However the victim had an undiagnosed condition which meant his skull was extremely thin (an eggshell) and the blow killed him.
The defence was that the offender had no way of knowing this, or of anticpating it, and therefore did not commit murder.
The court ruled (quicte rightly) that -
He had committedan offence - an assault.That his assault had resulted in the death of the victim.That he SHOULD allow for the fact that his victim MIGHT be more vulnerable than the ordinary man in the street. Therefore that he was guilty of murder.
So, in this case, if a court felt that HMRCs letters were harassing in nature, and that the harassment had pushed him over the edge, then in theory, HMRC could be in very deep doo doo.
Egg Shells
This spurious argument would be music to the ears of defence counsel. Anybody know of one round here?
-- Kind regards Andy
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So, according to andy, every case since Smith v Leech Brain & Co [1962] 2 QB 405 has been wrong, hundreds of judges have reached spurious decisions, and the courts don't know what they are doing ?
Or maybe its just andy who doesnt know what he's talking about?
Andy and the Dragon
Any comment by either of you after this point which is deemed as being rude, inflammatory or 'right of reply' will be deleted. You are not going to derail another thread.
thanks CD
... for explaining the origin of the law, but that was an attack caused by 'instigator'.
I am still unclear about a seemingly innocent action, that may result in an unexpected action from someone else, and the innocent action being blamed for the consequences.
Maybe an example will help (this is just an example but I have experienced something very similar) .....
I have a very difficult client who argues, and moans, about everything. I call a meeting to try and resolve the problems, but their belligerent attitude makes this impossible, so I resign as accountant. The client then goes into a raging temper and starts making threats, and injures me, or a member of my staff. I find out (after the event) that they have mental problems and anger management problems. Do I carry the blame for their actions, the reason being that they were vulnerable and I put them under additional stress? How could I know? And if I did know, how could I possibly get rid of them without causing them stress?
This seems like a whole can of worms to me.
I think your example holds water...
However, your actions are reasonable ones given the circumstances. The fact that the client behaves in an unreasonable manner due to unspecified mental issues of which you could not reasonable have been aware, then you might feel guilt and blame yourself for the circumstances of what happened, but it was not you who "pulled the trigger".
For the most part, people today are fairly liberal in attitude and prepared to forgive or even blame themselves where they are involved in situations whereby a 3rd party injures or kills someone. Guilt is almost built into our national psyche (especially if you are religeous), but it doesn't mean that it is real.
We need to forgive ourselves for the actions of others over which we have no control.
Here endeth the lesson
@ C_D
I think you misunderstood. Probably my fault but let me elaborate a little.
The eggshell principle is very well known but it takes a massive leap in imagination to maintain that it has more than a passing relevance to this tragic case.
I thought you made your point very well, so well that it seems unnecessary to imply and repeat that it is at the very core of the case. Your views on HMRC are well known and most of us have sympathy with them to a degree, but it seems to me that this has coloured your judgement.
Of course I might turn out to be wrong. Let me know after HMRC are successfully prosecuted.
--- Kind regards Andy
Shirley
The whole principal revolves around the question - was the original act unlawful.
In the Bird case this all depends on an assessment of the letters sent, and the number of letters sent, by HMRC (something which we dont know).
If, in a courts view, the number of letters, or their frequency or content, constituted harassment of Mr Bird, then HMRC would be responsible for any subsequent actions which their letters instigated. It would not be a defence to say that he owed money because no matter whether someone owes money or not it is a criminal offence to harass or threaten them.
It should also always be remembered that the harassment law is very widly drawn. It is totally irrelevent whether you as the harasser consider your actions to constitute harassment, the test is whether the victim finds your actions distressing or intimidatory (ie whether the experience fear or distress).
In your example, no,. you could not be held responsible because your action in resigning as someones accountant is not capable of being constried as an offence.
The point of the v"egg shell skull" is that if you commit an offence of any sort, then you are responsible for its consequences, even if they could not be forseen.
andy
Let me know after HMRC are successfully prosecuted.
Posted by andypartridge on Fri, 04/03/2011 - 16:59
I currently have a case of a HMRC officer who is under investigation for harassment, falsification of documents, assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, and several further possible charges all relating to various forms of corruption - other officers may be implicated as having colluded. (No I dont ALWAYS defend - this one I'm looking forward to even if they have to carry me into court to prosecute it).
As and when concluded (at a guess later this year) of course I will give details.
Thanks again
To all who helped explain.
In a nutshell, it is only applicable to someone who commits an offence. I can see a physical assault being an offence, and easy to determine, but words are more open to interpretation.
What one person sees as being totally reasonable may be seen by others as threatening & intimidating. I don't see how debt recovery, in any form, can be anything but stress inducing.
Shirley
What one person sees as being totally reasonable may be seen by others as threatening & intimidating. I don't see how debt recovery, in any form, can be anything but stress inducing.
Posted by ShirleyM on Fri, 04/03/2011 - 19:02
It can, and often is threatening & intimidating Shirley. Just this week there is an example (see links below). As I said before, if it is construed as amounting to harassment then you are in trouble. Debt recovery companies are second in the list of "people most often subjected to injunctions" (ex husbands/wives being at number 1).
I dealt with a case some years ago of a particularely offensive "Collector of Taxes" who said to a taxpayer (who recorded the conversation) - QUOTE - "People like you shouldnt be allowed to eat until you pay your taxes". Would you have viewd such a scurrilous statement as distressing ?
Newspaper report - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362603/Judge-writes-customers-20-000-credit-card-debt-hearing-hounded-repay-money.html
Full ruling - http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Mercantile/2011/B3.html
More irrelevance
I don't know why you are persisting with this and bringing up an entirely different case in which you have an interest that does not concern Derrick Bird.
I thought I was clear, but if not, please advise when HMRC are successfully prosecuted for events concerning Mr Bird resulting from the Egg Shell principle. Not when HMRC lose an entirely unconnected case.
(You won't be able to, because it ain't gonna happen.)
-- Kind regards Andy
Pre judging
I don't know why you are persisting with this and bringing up an entirely different case in which you have an interest that does not concern Derrick Bird.
I thought I was clear, but if not, please advise when HMRC are successfully prosecuted for events concerning Mr Bird resulting from the Egg Shell principle. Not when HMRC lose an entirely unconnected case.
(You won't be able to, because it ain't gonna happen.)
-- Kind regards Andy
Posted by andypartridge on Sat, 05/03/2011 - 16:
The legal principal remains the same and it is clear to any unbiased observer that the perceived threat by HMRC was at the very least a partial causative factor in pushing Mr Bird over the edge. Only those with no legal knowledge and minimal common sense would fail to see that.
The question of whether they are, therefore, partially responsible in law, lies purely with an unbiased assessment of whatever correspondence, telephone calls, etcera were made and the content and frequency thereof. If, as in the recent case which I quoted, they are seen to be excessive either in number or content such that they constitute a course of conduct amounting to harassment (the definition of which in relation to debt collection is conveniently set out in the Administration of Justice Act 1970 and expanded upon in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997) then HMRC would, in law, be at least partially responsible and a criminal prosecution would follow. If, on the other hand, they are seen to be reasonable in both content and frequency, then they are not responsible.
I note that you say i"t ain't gonna happen" - you are possibly correct, or maybe not, luckily the court will not be relying upon your biased view of the evidence, and would not presume to reach a verdict without viewing all of the evidence in detail. Obviously you would.
A slice of reality, not a vague hypothesis
C_D, I am not asking you to prejudge the outcome of a known court case. I am asking you if you really think HMRC will face trial for the atrocities committed by Derrick Bird? I don't think it takes too much contemplation for the answer to be a simple 'No'. (If there is no trial, neither of us needs to prejudge the outcome of it!)
In which case, while much of what you have written in this thread may be heartfelt, it is largely irrelevant.
-- Kind regards Andy
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You THINK not?
I KNOW that relatives of Mr Bird are awaiting the coroners comments with great interest.
You must never forget that these things have an effect of the viability of civil claims, not just criminal proceedings.
There is of course also a wider issue in that we should all be aware of the possible consequences of our actions. I particularly have in mind the potential for being subjected to proceedings should an accountant file a money laundering report which is subsequently shown to have been wrong, and more importantly filed without proper consideration of whether there was sufficient cause for suspicion.
Innocent people wrongly accused have and do commit suicide, and relatives are often quick to sue the person they consider responsible for driving their son/daughter etc to that point.
Thank you!
Today I breathe a sigh of relief and have a celebratory slice of cake, because I am charmed and indeed grateful to come into work on a Monday and see that this thread has got back on track and everyone is getting along.
A whole-hearted and sincere thanks to you! If I could get cake to you all I would.
@ Becky
You could if you really wanted to
http://www.need-a-cake.co.uk/cakes-by-post/
-- Kind regards Andy