Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

2012 quotes of the year

by
27th Dec 2012
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Sometimes soundbites can revive memories in a way that more reasoned explanations cannot. Here's our selection of some of the comments that caught our ear during the past year.

* * *

“Harry Redknapp has made tax fun and has allowed me to talk to football supporters for the first time in my life and be knowledgeable too!” - Stuart Jones, via Twitter on the tax trial of the year.

* * *

“My accountant runs my life… I have a big problem, I can’t write, so I don’t keep anything. I’m the most disorganised person and I’m ashamed to say in the world, I can’t work a computer, I don’t know what an email is, I can’t, I have never sent a fax and I’ve never sent a text message.” Football manager Harry Redknapp explained how his accountant, Malcolm Webber, runs his life as part of a "I'm too thick to manage a tax evasion scam" defence at the beginning of the year. It worked. On the day he was acquitted in February, Redknapp was immediately installed as favourite to succeed England manager Fabio Capello, who resigned that day. For some reason, the FA did not decide to appoint him.

* * *

“Under the last Government, it was the boast of some high earners that, with the help of their accountants, they were paying less in tax than their cleaners. I regard tax evasion and – indeed – aggressive tax avoidance – as morally repugnant.” During his Budget speech, Chancellor George Osborne jumped on the anti-avoidance bandwagon that gathered momentum throughout the year.

* * *

“Is tax avoidance the new paedophilia?” - Simon Sweetman reflects on the Jimmy Carr tax avoidance scandal in June .

* * *

“I am delighted with this decision. It confirms my belief that I was an employee entitled to the same basic rights as an employee in any other industry. It has been a long struggle and I look forward to my unfair dismissal claim now proceeding to the Employment Tribunal. I hope this decision helps other dancers.” Former Stringfellows lapdancer Nadine Quashie on her employment tribunal victory in May. AccountingWEB members took a close interest in the case, due to its relevance for IR35 employment status cases, obviously.

* * *

“The purpose of the universal credit is to simplify the benefits system, but what is causing concern is how self-employed individuals are required to report their income. The reporting requirements are different to those currently being consulted on for small businesses. It makes no sense to introduce another system.  These proposals are unworkable and will hit the self-employed severely.” Gabelle's Paula Tallon leads the profession's charge against proposals for a new online reporting mechanism for self-employed universal credit claimants.

* * *

“The annual Budget and Autumn Statement are far too politicised a process and has led to an ever growing volume of tax legislation. The aggregate effect is that responsible citizens find compliance with our tax laws confusing and expensive, and businesses and their advisers struggle to cope with the amount of red tape. - ICAS director of tax Derek Allan attracted considerable support for his scrap the Budget blog in July.

* * *

“HMRC’s proposal is merely a fig leaf, designed to legitimise their recent practice of denying ESC A19 to the very individuals for whom it was intended to apply.” - Tax barrister Keith Gordon takes on HMRC over its stance on the extra-statutory concession for not acting on information in his Do not change ESC A19 petition.

* * *

“Unless a product constantly reinvents itself and remembers to look at itself from the outside - as a competitor - it will make the same errors as so many have done before  and become complacent and uncompetitive.” - Richard Messik offers his explanation for the seemingly inevitable decline and fall of BlackBerry

* * *

“I personally find it socially abhorrent that high earners can, by the use of artificial devices, avoid paying tax, which then has to be paid by those who can ill afford it – somehow the tax has to be raised.” ICAS president Sir David Tweedie joins the anti-avoidance crusade.

* * *

I wonder whether I can successfully quote back to them that they treat "customers" consistently regardless of size, and in the same breath mention Vodafone and Goldman Sachs in my negotiations." Clint Westwood comments on an analysis from UHY Hacker Young that HMRC aims at easy targets among small firms rather than grappling with corporate tax evasion.

* * *

“It is the train wreck we were expecting and it’s picking up speed. It’s going to be a disaster for us and even worse for HMRC.” Rebecca Benneyworth shares her view of the higher income child benefit charge (HICBC) at the Digita Conference. Having failed to stop it with her threat to chain herself to the gates at Parliament, she is now calling for the charge to be reversed.

* * *

“He is a man who knows a great deal about tax in a tax lawyer’s sort of way.” Simon Sweetman damns HMRC's new tax assurance commissioner Edward Troup with faint praise. In his previous career at the Treasury, Sweetman added, “He was the perfect mandarin, a man who said things that sounded informative at the time: but afterwards it would be very difficult to establish exactly what he had said that he could be held to.” [Sep 13]

* * *

“Accountancy is now becoming a trade not a profession. I used to have seven audits, but I could do 95% of my business without being registered.  We’re competing with anybody who can set up as a bookkeeper. If someone is made redundant and sets up on their own, you can’t compete with that.” - David Logan of McIlveen Howard (MHL) touched a nerve during a panel session at October's IRIS World conference in London.

Tags:

Replies (3)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By carnmores
31st Dec 2012 12:44

Quashie
Quashed

Thanks (0)
avatar
By carnmores
31st Dec 2012 12:47

oh yes
And lets wait till 31 jan before writing off the crackberry, roll on rehab

Thanks (0)
avatar
By Trevor Scott
02nd Jan 2013 11:21

Incorrect diagnosis

"“I personally find it socially abhorrent that high earners can, by the use of artificial devices, avoid paying tax, which then has to be paid by those who can ill afford it – somehow the tax has to be raised.” ICAS president Sir David Tweedie joins the anti-avoidance crusade."" 

 

The problem is the politicians who set the laws allowing rich people to gain when poorer people can't. Being rich isn't a crime.

 

Every time I see an HMRC letter I read it eagerly to see what nonsense they are prepared to put their name to. I've always thought it would be interesting to see who had the most ridiculous HMRC response, so I'll kick it off with "We do not have to have a reason do something."

 

Thanks (1)