If I had to admit to my biggest professional failure over a long career, it would be ‘telling it like it is’. Not for me the, ‘Oh my God! I don’t believe you did that, and if you don’t use my very expensive services, you may be heading for prison,’ when the true risk of…
In his latest movie, Quentin Tarantino - parodying Hollywood’s parody of itself - has a baddie refusing to die despite multiple wounds to her body. Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio (SPOILER ALERT) incinerates her with a flame thrower he happens to have next to his Beverly Hills swimming pool, and what's left of her reluctantly succumbs.…
‘Plutocracy’ is viewed generally as a dirty word. The idea (if not the practice) of government by the wealthy is anathema to those who treasure democracy. At first whiff the OECD Secretariat’s proposal for a unified worldwide approach to the taxation of the digital economy, issued for consultation earlier this month, failed the plutocratic…
The English language often lags scientific progress. We still 'turn on the radio', even if none of us have seen a dial in years. When my kids were growing up, I always reminded them to 'pull the chain' even though toilet flush mechanisms had long been more user-friendly. And today, our computers offer us the…
In my halcyon days as a tax adviser, a client conference meant lots of numbers thrown at a stark white screen via an overhead projector, the small audience looking pale and bored under the harsh fluorescent lighting. We, the professionals, were geeks that nobody wanted to talk to unless we were saving their cash, or…
Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, the tech giants collectively dubbed the FANGs, are hardly going to be digitally quaking in their virtual boots over British Finance Minister Phillip Hammond's Budget announcement last week that he plans imposing a 2% Digital Services Tax on their UK related turnover. Hammond himself admitted it would only be expected…
In a sweltering, politically incorrect scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones - tired of the boastful swordsmanship of an Arab adversary – nonchalantly draws his pistol and shoots him dead. This could be a metaphor for the last hundred years: with a few exceptions, when the Americans have put their minds to…
‘You’re not drunk, if you can lie on the floor without holding on.’ Dean Martin’s witticism has haunted me over the last couple of years as I have watched the impending self-destruction of the country of my birth (Brexit, the inevitability of a future Corbyn government), the temporary set-back to the United States (The Donald, the quack…
I have just emerged from a fascinating two-day conference in rain-soaked Lisbon. Despite the headline title, the real theme was inevitably the prospects for the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project of the OECD, the rump of which is due to be approved by the G20 shortly. The public proclamations on BEPS have displayed populist triumphalism…
Arguably, the greatest contribution to society of a liberal education is perspective. 'Dah da dah da dah. DISCUSS' was the way it went when I was at school, as opposed to the 'A, B, C, D, E. Tick one' of the modern era. Today, July 14, is only significant to the vast majority of the…
Tax Break 