'Born to the m-i-i-i-i-i-ld' (To the tune of Steppenwolf's 'Born to be Wild')

Calculator running

Totalling invoices

Looking at debentures

And all other finance choices

Yeah darling, gonna make it add up

Put the world in a big spreadsheet

Do all of my sums at once and

Leave it really neat

Some find accounts frightnin’

Leaves them full of wonder

All of these expenses

Just what heading are they under?

Yeah darling, gonna make it add up

Put the world in a big spreadsheet

Do all of my sums at once and

Leave it really neat

All prop-er-ly filed

I was born, born to be mild

Tax returns so sly

I make the taxman cry

Born to be mi-i-i-ild

Born to be mi-i-i-ild

Calculator running

Totalling invoices

Looking at debentures

And all other finance choices

Yeah darling, gonna make it add up

Put the world in a big spreadsheet

Do all of my sums at once and

Leave it really neat

All properly filed

I was born, born to be mild

Tax returns so sly

I make the taxman cry

Born to be mi-i-i-ild

Born to be mi-i-i-ild

Words by accountant and poet: Stephen Brown Audio version can be heard here.

It's official: HMRC writes "ridiculous" "nonsense"

Given this is a fun blog it's not usual for me to reference the decision in a tax tribunal. But it was impossible to resist when I heard about what the tribunal said.

Mr South was appealing against a late filing penalty in respect of his tax return for 2012/13.  HMRC claimed to have sent him a notice requiring him to file the return in question. The computer then sent an automatic penalty which was what alerted Mr South to the need to file the return.

He was reluctant to pay the late filing penalty as he had not received a 'notice to file' and had not been required to file returns every year in the recent past. 

Mr South then received a rejection of his appeal sent by an official from HMRC who said: 

“On reviewing I can see that no evidence to date has been received confirming that you did not receive a tax return or notice to file.”

In reaching their decision that Mr South did NOT need to pay the penalty the Tribunal said:

The result of [Mr South's] appeal is a piece of nonsense and shows that the appeal was not properly considered by HMRC. It is ridiculous to expect the appellant to produce evidence to show he did not receive the tax return or notice to file. 

Steven Maurice South vs HMRC -12 August 2014

An accountant with a STANDOUT way of describing himself

The way Mark Asquith, Managing Director of Asquith & Co, describes himself, on the meet the team page of his website, certainly makes him stand out. I'm referring especially to the table beneath the more conventional opening paras:

I have been working in accountancy since 1982 having started work as a spotty trainee on leaving school. Asquith & Co became a reality in 2001 although I had previously hankered after being self-employed. 

I love helping clients to keep just on the right side of the taxman while, hopefully, having a few laughs on the way - this is not easy but I do try.

                   Specialist subject:     Saving you money

                   Likes:                        Saving you money

                   Dislikes:                    Not saving you money 

                   Favourite colour:       Black... keeping you in it

                   Favourite food:         Roast taxman 

                   Favourite place:       Judo mat

                   Currently drives:       The taxman crazy

 

A truly taxing palindrome

Sex at noon taxes

Tax flags

A British guy was chatting with his American friend and was jokingly explaining about the red, white and blue in our National flag.

"Our flag symbolises our taxes," he said. "We get red when we talk about them, white when we get our tax bill, and blue after we pay them."

"That's the same with us," the American said, "only we see stars, too."

Very thick skinned accountant wanted by boss of Ryanair

I was amused by this headline in The Times: Wanted by Ryanair: accountant, very thick-skinned.

Rarely does an accountancy job qualify as a hazardous posting in a hostile environment. However, there is a vacancy for a personal aide to the notoriously volatile boss of Ryanair.

The Irish airline is advertising for an “assistant to Ryanair’s CEO”, Michael O’Leary, stipulating an “ambitious qualified accountant” able to work in a “demanding, challenging and interesting role”.

Good luck if this appeals and you get the job!

Death and Taxes and Zombies

The following academic paper was brought to my attention after I tweeted a link to a newspaper report that incorrectly implied that more and more people are being 'hit' by inheritance tax while they are still alive.

This article fills a glaring gap in the academic literature by examining how the estate and income tax laws apply to the undead. Beginning with the critical question of whether the undead should be considered dead for estate tax purposes, the article continues on to address income tax issues the undead are likely to face. In addition to zombies, the article also considers how estate and income tax laws should apply to vampires and ghosts. Given the difficulties identified herein of applying existing tax law to the undead, new legislation may be warranted. However, any new legislation is certain to raise its own set of problems. The point here is not to identify the appropriate approach. Rather, it is to goad Congress and the IRS into action before it is too late.

The paper was inspired by the following perception:

The U.S. stands on the precipice of a financial disaster, and Congress has done nothing but bicker. Of course, I refer to the coming day when the undead walk the earth, feasting on the living. A zombie apocalypse will create an urgent need for significant government revenues to protect the living, while at the same time rendering a large portion of the taxpaying public dead or undead. The government’s failure to anticipate or plan for this eventuality could cripple its ability to respond effectively, putting us all at risk. 

Death and Taxes and Zombies was written by Adam Chodorow of Arizona State University (ASU) - Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law and published July 5, 2012
98 Iowa Law Review 1207 (2013) 

With many thanks to Iain Campbell for the link

All accountants are.......?

When you start searching in Google the clever little thing offers to complete your search string. In effect the system recognises and offers you the rest of what other people have searched for even if the words are in a different order.

Here are some of the suggestions Google offered me recently by reference to the few words I typed in each case:

all accountants are....

....boring

.....alcoholics

most accountants are....

accountants most unhappy

accountants most likely to have an affair

most famous accountants

why don't accountants....

....get paid overtime?

.....consider opportunity cost [of their time]?

can accountants....

...certify documents?

...sign passports?

....work from home?

....become rich?

Inspired by David Gilroy, "Director of Stuff & Things", at Conscious Solutions Limited, whose latest newsletter referenced a similar exercise he did re solicitors.

John Challis on why he didn't become a tax inspector

John Challis tells the story that in the late 1970's he was summoned by one of her Majesty's Tax Inspectors to discuss his meagre contribution to the Inland Revenue.

John notes that he sat before a middle-aged grey suited man who had obviously not seen the light of day for some time and, after a few minutes silence, the Inspector looked up and said: "You seem to be remarkably unsuccessful in your chosen profession, why don't you give it up and do something more rewarding?"

John thought for a moment and replied: "What? You mean become a tax inspector or something?"

"There's no need to be offensive," replied the Inspector.

John says he's rather glad he didn't follow the Inspector's advice. [Since then he's gone onto star as Boysie in Only Fools and Horses and in the spin-off sit com The Green Green Grass]

Dictionary definition (or not) of timesheet

As suggested by Cara Miller of Miller Walsh Associates in an article for Accountancy Age:

Timesheet (noun): swearword commonplace in many a UK accountany office. Bane of life. Likely to cause lots of sighing. Method of keeping boss happy while driving everyone else crazy...

Can you suggest any further definitions?

Charlie's Tax Return (from The West Wing)

The 3 short clips linked up here are a delightful reminder of how wonderful was the TV show, The West Wing. And even though it addresses US taxes the reason for the discrepancy can just as easily arise under the UK's PAYE system.

The bar at the Taxation Awards

Stephen Mangan was the host at last week's Taxation Awards. This is an annual event for 600 of the UK's top tax advisers - and a few hangers on like me.

Mangan did a superb job. Worth a mention on this blog were his observations after he announced that following the awards ceremony there would be a cash bar.

"A cash bar? At the Taxation awards? Make sure you keep your receipts!"

Oh well. maybe you had to be there...

What do you give the man who has everything?

A tax investigation!

Hidden money away and not told the taxman? Your options...

The following suggestions are those of Phil Hodgen. He has offered this advice especially for those who have hidden money away in Lichtenstein banks, lied and not declared the interest on their accounts:

• Jump up and down and say “It’s not right! The government can’t do illegal stuff like that!” (Response: So what? Cat. Bag. Out.) 
• Sit tight and do nothing. (Response: Inevitable merely postponed. Pain handed to your kids because you won’t deal with it.) 
• Run away to Panama. (Saw that happen last week for a US citizen I know. He is a fugitive for the rest of his life.) 

Or you can be a grown up and clean up your mess. (Why make a money problem into a jail problem?)

A unique way to encourage clients to file their tax returns early

What it takes to become a professional accountant

Every now and then I come across a US video about accountants that I feel fits on this site. I've just become aware of the CPA 2014 Rule the Tube video competition and one of the finalist videos made me really smile. Hope you like it too.

The accountant with a special time clock

There was an unscrupulous accountant who always overcharged his customers.

He had a special clock built that ran faster than other clocks. It ran at nearly twice the speed of a normal clock so that 1 hour would appear as 2 hours. He then tracked his time by using the fast clock and in essence doubled his billing hours.

He bragged about his overcharging process to his close friends and his wife. He also bragged about other topics such as his golf score, his time in running the mile and his endurance when being intimate with his wife.

The latter was his most proud accomplishment. Therefore, it took him by surprise when his wife filed for divorce a year later. He remonstrated with her “Dear why would you leave me? I have given you money, a fine house, companionship and a great love life!”

She replied, “True, you have given me money and a fine house – although by ill gotten gains. Your companionship is shallow because you only think of yourself AND as to your skills in the bedroom, I just wanted you to know that I had a clock made just like the one you use at work!”

Novel and fun claims for tax relief

I'd love to see other examples attached as comments to this posting.

Thanks to Keith Deane for letting me know about 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".

As a result he claimed that he had to constantly wash his hands to rid himself of exclusively business dirt and as such the water so consumed was an essential element of his business activity. Thus the accountant claimed a proportion of his household water bills as being business related.

Keith does not relate HMRC's reaction to the claim - though I think we can guess....

Now that's novel. What other examples can you suggest?

Some ecards re taxes - that made me smile

Why Tax Returns Belong With Cake - alledgedly

Regular readers of my main website will know I am keen on the idea of accountants and bookkeepers standing out from the crowd. One lady who does this in a unique way is Rosie Slosek of 'one man band accounting'.

Her website has a distinct feel about it - beyond the fact that she has a single clearly defined target audience - which you might guess from the name of her site.

Rosie, who offers bookkeeping services to one man bands, seems to be almost obsessed with cakes and brownies!  The menu bar at the top of her site starts, on the left, as usual with 'home'. The next item though is 'cake'. The cake page explains that Rosie sends one of her signature home made brownies to each new client. Her intention is to "turn Accounts Time into You Time".

On her blog Rosie shares 3 reasons that tax returns belong with cake.

She explains that baking is like bookkeeping in that you need to do a lot of precise things in the right order. With baking, you get a delicious cake, biscuit or brownie at the end.

She also explains how she gets to enjoy doing bookkeeping.

• Create a good environment: put on some music, clear some space 
• Give a little luxury: get yourself a cuppa or a glass of wine 
• Add some sweetness: a slice of cake or a gooey brownie 

It’s easier than you think. It’s training your brain to associate lovely things with your bookkeeping instead of ‘oh no, not this again’. Bookkeeping = good music, a fabulous drink and delicious cake.

I must admit, Rosie may have a point!

Outrageous pop stars do it to avoid tax

The Swedish pop group Abba are reported to have admitted in a book, that the outrageous outfits they wore on stage in their heydey were chosen to avoid tax.

It seems the Swedish tax code is similar to that of the UK when it comes to claiming tax relief for clothing. To ensure that their stage outfits were allowable deductions the costumes had to be so outrageous that they couldn't be worn on the street. Apparently many Swedish bands made as habit of dressing as flamboyantly as possible.

Reflecting on the group's sartorial record in a new book, Björn Ulvaeus said: "In my honest opinion we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were."

Clearly Bjorn has forgotten about the British glam rockers of the 1970s - many of whom wore equally outrageous outfits.  I'm thinking of the Sweet, T-Rex, Slade - there are many such examples from my youth. Who'd have thought they chose their outfits to avoid tax?!

And, even though this is my 'lighter side' blog, I should stress two points:

1. I doubt that the facility to deduct the cost of stage costumes from their earnings was uppermost in many minds at the time - other than perhaps that of Abba. 
2. Why are the media reporting this as tax avoidance anyway? All the band did was to ensure that there could be no argument that their stage clothes qualified for tax relief. Any sensible person does the same thing as regards all genuine business expenses.

A taxing approach to Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day HMRC issued a prompt to anyone claiming tax credits, who has a partner moving in with them, to say those three little words.........

"....Tell the Taxman."

Tax credit claimants who don’t keep HMRC up to date about their circumstances risk getting an overpayment, a fine or possibly a criminal prosecution. So it's good advice ;-)

In a similar vein I came across a couple of related Valentine's day poems being tweeted by accountants:

Roses are red 

Violets are blue 

Here's your tax return 

My fee note too 

That's from Kevin the Accountant of KAL Accountants who also seems to have inspired this one:

Rose is a flower 

Violet's a flower 

Hope they don't mind 

That you charge by the hour

Rod Liddle's innovative ideas about tax planning

I came across this wonderful expose on the Sage Exchange, Accountancy community blog. Rod Liddle is a guest writer there and, in an intro piece about his own approach to accountancy and tax, he explains his attitude to tax planning as follows:

"In the short-term I've tried to interest my accountants in reconfiguring Friar Luca Paciolis' famous formula for double-entry bookkeeping to incorporate two new values when calculating my tax bill: n, which represents a sum of money to be deducted from my taxable income based upon how nice I have been to people during the year, as estimated by myself, and x which represents a sum of money I have received from somewhere and do not wish the tax people to know about.

So the re-written formula would read: Assets = L+C-D-N+R(-X)-E. 

I firmly believe that this innovation is the single greatest contribution to accountancy since the renaissance (and, with respect to Fra Pacioli, perhaps before), and I suspect that all of your clients will agree when they see those nice subtraction signs in the formula.  

I should not really claim sole credit for this innovation as I have drawn on important pioneering work by certain accounting experts (I refer you to studies by K. Dodd, L. Piggott and especially ground-breaking work in the US from W. Snipes). 

I've already mentioned it to my accountant but he got that horrible weary look on his face and at one point suggested I take my business elsewhere."

You can read the full piece here >>>

A cheesy way to avoid tax....

The mountains of the Savoie region are home to Reblochon, the famous French washed rind cheese.

The name “Reblochon” comes from the French verb “reblocher”, which we have no English equivalent for, but roughly translates to: “The act of pinching a cow’s udders.”

In the Middle-Ages, farmers in the mountains of Haute Savoie used to pay their taxes with part of their milk production. In order to bring their production levels down, the farmers wouldn’t fully milk their cows. Once the tax officers came to measure the milk produced and left, the farmers went back to milk the cows again. In between milkings, the milk would culture, making it much richer and giving it more depth of flavor.

Today Reblochon is still made using partially cultured milk, but no longer as a means of tax evasion.

Credit for this piece of cheesy tax avoidance history goes to Great Ciao a Minnesota based provider of artisan produced cheese

Who would be the Sherlock and Watson of the tax world?

This morning Heather Self, tax expert and of Pinsent Masons, was interviewed about some tax issues on BBC Radio 5. On her arrival at the studio she posted a photo on twitter of the sight that faced her.

This led to a short series of humorous tweets including:
- Will the next episode of Sherlock be the new case of the missing receptionist?
and
- Who would be the Sherlock and Watson of the tax world?

This inspired the following suggestions:

• Sherlock: John Andrews
• Watson: Mike Truman
• Mycroft: Holmes: John Whiting
• Moriarty: Richard Murphy
• Mrs Hudson: Lin Homer
• Inspector Lestrade: Edward Troup

Which other TV programme would you recast with personalities from the tax world?

There are three types of accountant in the world

There are three types of accountant in the world.

Those who can count and those who can't.

Kinky accountants?

How do you know if your accountant's a bit kinky?

When they insist on satin balance sheets

Compliments for accountants

Full marks to to the team at PracticeWeb for creating a random compliment generator specifically for accountants. You can access it here and get as many random compliments as you like.

Here are some samples of what you might find:

• When HMRC see your tax returns, they applaud...then cry 
• Thank you SO MUCH, it was such a relief to know you were dealing with it 
• I used to think accountants were boring....how wrong was I? 
• Not only are you gorgeous but you're great at minimising corporation tax

You get the idea ;-)

HMRC's top ten list of bizarre, exotic and flimsy excuses

HMRC has revealed the ‘Top 10 oddest excuses’ for sending in a late return.

The following "bizarre, exotic and flimsy" excuses have all been tried, unsuccessfully by tardy taxpayers who were hoping to avoid the £100 late filing penalty:

• My pet goldfish died (self-employed builder); 
• I had a run-in with a cow (Midlands farmer); 
• After seeing a volcanic eruption on the news, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else (London woman); 
• My wife won’t give me my mail (self-employed trader); 
• My husband told me the deadline was 31 March, and I believed him (Leicester hairdresser); 
• I’ve been far too busy touring the country with my one-man play (Coventry writer); 
• My bad back means I can’t go upstairs. That’s where my tax return is (a working taxi driver); 
• I’ve been cruising round the world in my yacht, and only picking up post when I’m on dry land (South East man); 
• Our business doesn’t really do anything (Kent financial services firm); and 
• I’ve been too busy submitting my clients’ tax returns (London accountant). 

Source: HMRC .gov.uk website 2 January 2014