Award Nomination

I am pleased to announce that HMRC Is Shite has been nominated for the New Statesman New Media Awards 2008.

The New Statesman, Britain’s leading political magazine is delighted to announce that HMRC Is Shite has been nominated for a New Media Award in the category of Campaign For Change. The campaign for change award will go to the individual or organisation that has most effectively influenced opinions and behaviour through the use of new media technology. The winner of this award will champion a cause and provide information and tools to instigate change.

The full press release can be downloaded here.

Cost Saving Suggestion

Given that the ICAEW made a loss of £1,909K in 2007, I assume that they are looking for ways of saving money in order to avoid raising my members' subscriptions (oh, my mistake, we are being asked to vote for an increased in subs of 4%).

I note that the accounts state that communications expenditure increased by 71%, mainly due to the provision of Accountancy to all members. I can't see in the accounts how much the figure actually is though.

Given that all the qualified accountants that I know simply throw the magazine in the bin, unopened.

Why not stop sending out accountancy to members?

Loss

The ICAEW made a large loss in 2007

Net result before JDS £1,750K (2007) £5,433K (2006)
Funding of JDS £3,389K (2007) £1,671K (2006)
Net result after tax £(1,639)K (2007) £3,762K (2006)

The result is particularly poor given that income increased from £63,615K in 2006 to £69,052K in 2007, a rise of 8.5%.

It seems that "A substantial part of the Institute's expenditure was as a result of investment in people, with headcount increasing by 9.8% to 594".

Why do they use the Nu Labour word "investment", when we all know that they mean cost?

It is a sad indictment of our profession that a council and board of over 100 accountants cannot at least manage to break even.

I assume that we may expect further increases in our subscriptions.

Reputation

I see that The Guardian has taken a snide sideswipe against accountants, in its coverage of its row with Tesco over tax avoidance.

"As is often the way, the tax had no sooner been introduced than some companies engaged smart accountants and lawyers to work out ways of avoiding what parliament had clearly intended....

But fleet-footed accountants and lawyers were still nimbler, knowing that UK tax legislation is rarely retrospective. A casual reading of the Treasury's repeated statements on SDLT avoidance can leave no doubt as to its frustration at the lengths to which companies would go to outwit the law - and at the sums draining away from the exchequer as a result."

Seemingly, the negative subliminal message being drip fed by the Guardian is that "smart" accountants are rather "devious" and are depriving the government of its "legitimate right" to collect as much tax as it wants.

The Guardian needs to remember that, as I have said before on www.hmrconline.com, tax avoidance is not illegal; we all avoid tax each year by using personal allowances.

The need to avoid tax would be considerably reduced if Brown simplified the tax system.

The ICAEW needs to launch a counter offensive, and counteract the Guardian's negative spin about our profession.

HMRC

It is clear that taxpayers, tax professionals and indeed those who work for HMRC are less than happy with the way that HMRC is being run;

-the failed merger with Customs,
-the ongoing "rationalisation",
-security issues, "customer" care,
-avoidance vs evasion
-and the politicisation of HMRC

are ongoing issues that need to be addressed.

The ICAEW for its part, does its best to push for improvement by lobbying the government and HMRC and by issuing press releases.

Unfortunately, the ICAEW is ham strung in its attempts to promote improvement by the fact that it still has to maintain good relations with the government, the technical nature of much of the subject matter (like it or not, the media and public are turned off by the technicalities of taxation) and that it is by its nature too polite.

Therefore I would like to remind those of you who would like to see an alternative form of critique about HMRC, less "soft cop" more "nasty cop" which is not written by committee, to visit www.hmrcisshite.com.

Those of you with self censoring browsers can visit the same site via the less "in your face" url www.hmrconline.com.

SIDC Collaboration

The Securities Industry Development Corporation (SIDC) of Malaysia is collaborating with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) to offer their Corporate Finance (CF) qualification programme.

In a statement yesterday, the SIDC said it would become the first CF programme provider outside the United Kingdom and Canada.

It said the CF qualification, jointly developed by the ICAEW and the CICA, was fast becoming recognised as the benchmark of success in the field of corporate finance.

Source The Daily Edge

Anton Colella Joins The Blogosphere

Welcome to Anton Colella (CEO of ICAS) who has joined the blogosphere.

ICAEW Member Communications Survey II

I have just completed my twenty minute telephone interview with ReputationInc, as part of the ICAEW Member Communications Survey.

They are conducting in depth interviews with 50 members, who have been selected at random from those members who completed the online questionnaire (skewed in favour of those who who criticised or praised ICAEW communications).

A detailed report of the findings will be presented to the ICAEW Board in due course.

ICAEW Member Communications Survey

The other week I completed the online ICAEW Member Communications Survey.

On Friday, ReputationInc (which is conducting the survey on behalf of the ICAEW) emailed me to let me know that I was in a randomly selected sample of members to be interviewed in more depth about member communications.

I have a telephone interview with them booked for this Thursday.

Who Pays?

Paul Boyle, CEO of the Financial Reporting Council, has waded into row over the registration of the term "accountant" and proposal by the ICAEW to stratify the profession.

He suggests that the idea has not been thought through.

Boyle is quoted in Accountancy Age:

"It would be very interesting to see what cost benefit analysis the institutes could produce on this proposal. By definition they can't have power over non-members, so who is going to do this, and who is going to pay for it?".

I can certainly answer the "who is going to pay" part.

The members of course, via higher subscriptions!