An accountant at the G20 summit

Richard

Many thanks. There is a lot of reading to be done. I have not had the time to read it yet but over a period perhaps I will.
I still think the summit itself was a big waste of funds. I'm sure you have also seen the furore over the wasteful expenses the MPs that we all employ are involved in. Any ideas on this?

Have no doubt about it.

That's why Gordon Brown wrote the Maunday Thursday letters

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2009/04/11/the-maunday-thursday-letters/

Then read this

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2009/03/09/jersey-briefing-3/

And this is a summary oif these places real business - facilitating tax evasion. £4 billion does not happen by chance:

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2009/03/02/tax-havens-cost-the-uk-at-least-4-billion-a-year-2/

Get real: these places are not about freedoms - they are about abuse - and they're going to have no choice but reform now

The writing is on the wall for all who use them

Richard

Gerald

Start here, then come back for more

http://www.christianaid.org.uk/images/deathandtaxes.pdf

Richard

www.taxresearch.org.uk/blog

I note in this article French president Nicolas Sarkozy includes the Shetland Islands as one of the tax havens he wants to crack down on. Having lived here most of my life I am puzzled about where he got his information from.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/20/g20-tax-haven-blacklist

So, now the OECD, the Germans and the French all say that the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and many others are not tax havens will Mr Brown, Mr Darling and Mr Murphy admit this is the case? Time will tell.

The real issue over so called tax havens is banking secrecy and tax evasion. Which countries are most to blame? Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium - and the UK isn't far behind. The lack of transparancy and poor regulation in those countries is quite startling.

People like Murphy won't be happy until everyone is paying the same tax all over the world. But worse, people like him believe that taxpayers should pay whatever tax their political masters impose even when - as is clearly the case in the UK - huge amounts of money are wasted by these governments. Democratic accountability? Certainly not in the EU.

It is one thing to stamp out tax evasion and criminal activity. It is another to attack any country, large or small, that manages its economy in such as way as to levy only reasonable taxation. It is not acceptable to stop people legally structuring their businesses in such a way as to pay as little tax as possible. Indeed, that is a right first established in the UK several centuries ago.

Richard
I haven't got a clue about tax havens. Your comment that "tax havens cause massive poverty in the developing world" caught my eye. How come? Have you a few brief explanation points?
All that security and all those very important people. It wasn't cheap to run this show. Maybe they should all have stayed in their own offices and discussed via video link? A type of blogging? Then the travel, security, food and drinks money could have been sent to the developing world.

No I think they prefer this medium because, with honourable exceptions, it is diffuse and immediate- instant reactions rather than considered and worked out pieces, and posts that are pretty time limited in reality, despite the illusion of continuous accessability. Plus its trendy of course.

Odd for me to admit the Daily Mail have a point - but there's little doubt that the bloggers got a good deal at the G20

We got the ministerial visits, the access to the senior team members, in my case at least (and I'm sure I was not alone) to #10, to Bob Geldof (f that counts as a benefit).

Why? because they know alternative media delivers results. That's why, I suggest.

Richard

Congratulations on your press conference success Richard. The tone of your report differs interestingly from this morning's Radio 4 interview with columnist Quentin Letts who moaned about the lack of accessprint journalists got at the summit. "This is an abuse of the democratic process... lack of transparency over negotiations that involve spending billions of pounds of our money," he fulminated.

There's a parallel here to how some of the big software companies (I'm thinking SAP) have courted the blogging community and cold-shouldered traditional media outlets - many of whom give them a hard time. Granting privileged access is the new PR way to manage the message, and favoured bloggers are happy to play along. My own experience of the G20 coverage includes a bit of disappointment - I found a lot of it to be unfocused and incoherent, and there doesn't appear to be anyone sitting back and bringing the different threads into a wider context.

As a grizzled old hack myself, I'd be a little more impressed if the angle of a lot of the coverage (ie that which you talk about in the first few lines) wasn't ,"Oh wow, a blogger got to ask the prime minister a question" rather than focusing on the substance of what came out of the event.

The most pertinent thing I heard about the G20 summit was from an unnamed official who commented that what most politicians and civil servants think of as international co-operation boils down to writing comminiques.

Yesterday was indeed a great day for tax justice, but who's going to boil down the proposals, draft them into legislation and regulatory rules and then enforce them?

Good luck with your campaign and for all our sakes, I look forward to seeing someone put the G20 plans into practice.

John Stokdyk
Technology editor
AccountingWEB.co.uk