Ask HMRC directly about an individual adviser? Elsewhere on this website we read (at https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=188131&d=1025&h=1019&f=1026) that HMRC say “If a person approaches us (HMRC) for advice, they are entitled…to expect that our advice will be correct…” Surely in the context of the current item, this means that all the taxpayer has to do is ask HMRC whether their proposed tax adviser is competent?....
When unknown deposits become capital accretion What about when HMRC argue that every unspecified deposit is also a capital accretion? In a case before General Commissioners (which I chaired) a very senior tax inspector presented a purported reconciliation of the “savings + expenditure = income + other receipts” type. This was complete nonsense because he had included as “savings” the cash flow into a bank account which began the period in question with a zero balance and ended it with a zero balance (so the amount “saved” in the account over the period was obviously zero). When corrected for this blatant error the purported undeclared business income disappeared from the equation. What particularly worried me were the following : (i) the inspector (who retired soon afterwards…) was so convinced of his case that when we rejected it he requested a Case Stated (presumably thrown out – or laughed out – by Head Office as the matter never proceeded); and most disturbing of all – (ii) the Chartered Accountant representing the taxpayer did not spot the inspector’s error and spent a couple of hours arguing on other grounds, which indicates that in this case the profession was no more competent than HMRC.
Use of water Somewhat belatedly catching up with my New Year reading, I was taken by Tim Hervey's comment back to my early days as a tax inspector (I'm not going to say exactly when, but we were still using the 1952 Act...). I heard from a colleague of an apportionment of water rates by a self-employed accountant who worked from home. He claimed that he often received books from clients (especially jobbing builders) that were "covered in muck", so that frequent handwashing to rid himself of exclusively business dirt was an essential element of his business activity. Apparently sufficiently plausible (or inventive) for the apportionment claim to be allowed...
Having kid(s)? Whenever I hear anyone burbling about the “size of your carbon footprint” my mind immediately races to a well-known four-letter word. Not from any desire to utter the expletive, but from the fact that no-one ever refers to the most environmentally unfriendly act possible (a potential consequence of the activity to which the four-letter word refers). If I never procreate, my carbon footprint (however large or small) dies with me. Procreation on the other hand makes me directly responsible for the carbon footprint of possibly tens, thousands, millions of my descendants. No other act of environmental vandalism comes anything close to the damage inflicted by this particular one. The Chinese policy of one child per couple is perhaps the only acceptable one…so how about increasing taxes exponentially for those who exceed this limit? It would hit the current leaders of both the main political parties hard, so it has got to be a good thing…
Give it all to charity Why the obsession with the "family" home and children and/or grandchildren? Surely the charitable exemption available to us non-breeders is equally available to breeders, so there is no real need for any estate to pay IHT? Leave everything to charity! After all, we are talking homes in the UK here, not in France (where complete disinheritance of progeny is - I believe - unfortunately not an option, and all those second homes might therefore cause a problem).
My answers
Ask HMRC directly about an individual adviser?
Elsewhere on this website we read (at https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=188131&d=1025&h=1019&f=1026) that HMRC say “If a person approaches us (HMRC) for advice, they are entitled…to expect that our advice will be correct…”
Surely in the context of the current item, this means that all the taxpayer has to do is ask HMRC whether their proposed tax adviser is competent?....
When unknown deposits become capital accretion
What about when HMRC argue that every unspecified deposit is also a capital accretion? In a case before General Commissioners (which I chaired) a very senior tax inspector presented a purported reconciliation of the “savings + expenditure = income + other receipts” type. This was complete nonsense because he had included as “savings” the cash flow into a bank account which began the period in question with a zero balance and ended it with a zero balance (so the amount “saved” in the account over the period was obviously zero). When corrected for this blatant error the purported undeclared business income disappeared from the equation. What particularly worried me were the following :
(i) the inspector (who retired soon afterwards…) was so convinced of his case that when we rejected it he requested a Case Stated (presumably thrown out – or laughed out – by Head Office as the matter never proceeded); and most disturbing of all –
(ii) the Chartered Accountant representing the taxpayer did not spot the inspector’s error and spent a couple of hours arguing on other grounds, which indicates that in this case the profession was no more competent than HMRC.
Use of water
Somewhat belatedly catching up with my New Year reading, I was taken by Tim Hervey's comment back to my early days as a tax inspector (I'm not going to say exactly when, but we were still using the 1952 Act...). I heard from a colleague of an apportionment of water rates by a self-employed accountant who worked from home. He claimed that he often received books from clients (especially jobbing builders) that were "covered in muck", so that frequent handwashing to rid himself of exclusively business dirt was an essential element of his business activity. Apparently sufficiently plausible (or inventive) for the apportionment claim to be allowed...
Having kid(s)?
Whenever I hear anyone burbling about the “size of your carbon footprint” my mind immediately races to a well-known four-letter word. Not from any desire to utter the expletive, but from the fact that no-one ever refers to the most environmentally unfriendly act possible (a potential consequence of the activity to which the four-letter word refers). If I never procreate, my carbon footprint (however large or small) dies with me. Procreation on the other hand makes me directly responsible for the carbon footprint of possibly tens, thousands, millions of my descendants. No other act of environmental vandalism comes anything close to the damage inflicted by this particular one. The Chinese policy of one child per couple is perhaps the only acceptable one…so how about increasing taxes exponentially for those who exceed this limit? It would hit the current leaders of both the main political parties hard, so it has got to be a good thing…
Give it all to charity
Why the obsession with the "family" home and children and/or grandchildren? Surely the charitable exemption available to us non-breeders is equally available to breeders, so there is no real need for any estate to pay IHT? Leave everything to charity! After all, we are talking homes in the UK here, not in France (where complete disinheritance of progeny is - I believe - unfortunately not an option, and all those second homes might therefore cause a problem).