Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" was an unlikely international bestseller. The Louvre, the Vatican and a French Church would hardly be expected to be up there amongst the 1001 places Joe Sixpack must visit before he dies. However, looking at what it did for interest in religion, can you imagine what a boon it…
Rocket tax
At the dawn of my career when I would flit from audit client to audit client, red and green pens at the ready, every accounting department would resonate at least once each day to the gravelly voice of Bonnie Tyler singing "Every now and then I fall apart". Well, last week scientists finally proved (almost) that she was…
Did you hear the one about…..?
Comedians fear the moment in their careers when they lose their timing. Evidently not the Cypriots. This week Cyprus proudly assumes the six month rotating presidency of the EU. Last week, after knocking on the doors of friends and distant neighbours to see if they could spare a dime, they finally asked the EU for a…
Waltz or requiem?
I was in Vienna last week for a European tax conference. Inevitably, the Eurozone crisis loomed enormously large but, in addition to the crop of European experts, there were speakers from China, Africa and the US to remind participants that Europe is not an island. Throughout the two days there was one word that refused…
Raising the energy bar
In my salad days, apart from holding down a regular job as an elementary school student, I had some house jobs. Returning home in the freezing dark each winter's eve, my chafed thighs burning from the cold, I would make straight for the soot encrusted scuttle standing guard outside the kitchen door. Carrying it across the yard to the squat bunker opposite I would scoop coal into…
Teaching Mrs Merkel German
Nostalgia ruled for most of last week. While the British indulged in a House of Windsor love fest, the world delighted in snippets of the Queen over her sixty year reign. It was Prince Charles, the King-in-Waiting, who stated the obvious at the Buckingham Palace Doorstep Concert noting that for many people this was the…
God save the queen from taxes!
The Queen (there is only one "Queen") was often lampooned in the 1980s TV series "Spitting Image" . It starred a bunch of incredibly elastic, outrageously exaggerated latex puppets. My favourite sketch had the Queen at her desk, surrounded by her totally dysfunctional latex family, writing Christmas cards to foreign countries. Completing the last card she announced…
It’s peace and democracy, stupid
We accountants do not care much for the front section of the newspaper. If a story cannot be reduced to prime numbers, it is not for us. After a cursory glance at the headlines we skip to Section B to be hypnotized by the latest business and finance news followed by yesterday's football, baseball and cricket…
Embracing the taxman
The most idiosyncratic teacher from my schooldays died last week. Feared by the new boys, persecuted by the middle school and respected by the senior pupils, he was the quintessential British schoolmaster of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Armed with a library of twenty aphorisms (I can, to this day, repeat every one by heart including his motto: "I may be fairly…
The Euro – a mental exercise
Zbig does not understand what the fuss over austerity in Europe is all about. He fails to comprehend the fall of the Dutch government, the elevation of a socialist to the presidency of France, the inconclusive election in Greece, bailouts and quantitative easing. All he can say, with his utterly limited command of at least 10 European languages, is that…
Tax Break 