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Um, surely the businesses that engage accountants are the ones who are already likely to be paying the correct tax.
Is it not the majority of businesses that don't have an accountant that make up the bulk of the tax gap? I thought that was HMRC's conclusion and ultimately why they are bringing in MTD?
Not sure that accountants' ethics have much to do with that debate.
Have to agree Tim
and I am quite certain that 7 out of 10 people who engage the local plumber to fix the leak dont give a rats [***] whether he pays his taxes correctly or not
"before I decide whether to hire your services or not can you please confirm that your latest accounts are fully transparent"
One I believe in paying the tax legally required too. Not a "fair" amount. The right amount of tax is the legally liable amount.
Two, I do not work for HMRC but for my client.
Three, I am very ethical but not PC (I leave that for the lefties)
Tim
I have dealt with several clients who don't declare everything they earn and know of others who use other accountants.
Clients in the building trade are notorious for doing cash jobs that don't go through the books.
I've done over 100 SAR's reporting clients for such practices but [***] all gets done.
I try and educate my clients as to what they should do but if they are determined to pull a scam its really hard to stop them.
"Accountants can help reduce the “tax gap” by making company accounts clearer, including their clients’ foreign transactions"
Oh yes? Am I supposed to tell my clients to disclose in their accounts all sorts of things that are nor required by law or even recommended by good practice?
And as for "educating small and medium-sized enterprises about paying the right amount" of tax they pay me to work out how much is due and then they pay it.
If "the right amount of tax" is the amount the law requires that is what gets paid.
The problem is that "the right amount of tax" is too often what the law should require but doesn't. See press articles about Apple, Google, Vodaphone, etc, etc etc.
I fear the writer has been swayed by the propaganda coming out of HMRC.
The CIOT wrote an article pointing out that according to HMRC's tax gap, fraud and error accounted for six times the amount of alleged tax avoidance. Remember by definition tax avoidance is legal and the figure for tax avoidance produced by HMRC is just a wish list, it's them saying if only the law had been written differently. Bear in mind that HMRC recently changed its published objectives from collecting the right amount of tax to "maximising revenues...", look them up. How would your behaviour change if your objectives were purely to maximise revenues?
HMRC are no longer interested in collecting the right amount of tax. They hire behavioural psychologists with taxpayers money to influence taxpayers behaviour, hoping to encourage them to pay tax that may not be due and hasn't been tested in the Courts. Meantime HMRC pump out APN's that they know to be estimated and unproven, but Debt Collection will press for bankruptcy if the APN is unpaid.
The alleged tax gap of £2.7bn is one 100th of the deficit for the year to March 2015 per the published whole of government accounts which show the loss for one year of £260bn. Which is what percentage of gross tax income? Yes we are up s@#t creek, but to blame tax avoidance is to fall for the propaganda of the Government and their lapdog behavioural psychologists who don't seem to care that their 'nudges' are not being used for good. Did they actually draft this article?
Making Tax Digital is also all about reducing costs and accelerating receipts.
I think the writer has made a real mistake implying that Accountants need to think about THEIR ethics.
the writer appears to be naive about tax and the profession
regrettably due to the training received which nowadays is
too loose and too fragmented. All major companies have tax departments/ and sole traders now do their own tax returns ?/
"Making Tax Digital is also all about reducing costs...."
True but is could be better put as "MTD is also about reducing HMRC costs by transferring a large amount of cost to the taxpayer"
Has HMRC said anything about the additional costs (software, time, professional fees) that this will make fall onto taxpayers? And it will be the small businesses that suffer as most larger business will have the systems etc to deal with it.