Thursday, April 02, 2009

The 300th post: Budget09 'leak' April Fool revealed

Yesterday I sent out a spoof email re a leaked Budget09 document which I had posted to my TaxBuzz blog.

Most readers spotted the giveaway in the final para which implied official recognition of my TaxBuzz blog. So far I know, no one spotted that the initial letters of the words starting each the 9 paras quoted on the blog spelled 'April Fool'. Too subtle I suspect.

I must apologise to anyone 'caught' or in anyway inconvenienced by the spoof. I did get two complaints for time wasting so I fear there may have been others. I did also receive dozens of positive comments from people who'd enjoyed the joke and I know you can't please all the people all the time.

Some of the replies made me laugh so I'll share them here:

- I saw this very day a small pink animal with a curly tail fly past my window.
- An Acrostic April fool even better (we all need to get out a lot more).
- A battalion of flying pigs passed overhead as I read the last paragraph.
- Very good, Mark! I hope you get bail in time for the Easter Holidays. White Rabbits!
- You are unquestionably the most amusing accountant/tax consultant I have ever known. Brilliant staff. As well as the Chancellor, I would like to thank you for the 1st April gift you have given me.
- If you want my opinion, you've been set up (or have I?). I do not believe there is any way that the final comments would ever find their way onto a Budget Notice, draft of otherwise - but maybe I'm wrong.

and my favourite:

- I can conclusively declare that this is not correct. My wife's brother-in-law's second cousin's ex-wife's son has given me an inside track to the hot news from the Treasury that in fact VAT is to be abolished and is to be replaced by a new tax on software (to be known as Windows Tax).

1 comment:

Mark Lee said...

As a post-script I should add that the Daily Telegraph subsequently ran a piece titled:
"VAT threshold April Fool taken seriously" which started with the following:

An elaborate April Fool joke by one prominent member of the profession has bamboozled one of the leading accountancy bodies and led to calls that the joke – a dramatic increase in the VAT registration threshold – be introduced in the Budget to help thousands of the smallest businesses.

You can read the whole piece here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/5116101/VAT-threshold-April-Fool-taken-seriously.html

T-shirts for accountants

Perhaps the original here was the T-shirt that offered a definition of an accountant: "Someone who does precision guesswork, based on u...