The surviving members of the Monty Python team must be cock-a-hoop over the cover of the (just about) current issue of The Economist. Under the headline: 'Europe's Economy', a parrot lies dead receiving an infusion, while Angela Merkel comments, 'It's only resting'. No further explanation required. Forty-five years on, the Parrot Sketch is part of the lingua…
Viva, Barcelona!
'In the beginning was the word' might have been the take on things in the Gospel according to John, but by my calculation, the oldest profession has never had much use for words (other than when haggling over price), and the second oldest profession (mine) has always relied on numbers; in any event, some years…
The Good Old Days?
By the time you get to my age (I, just about, remember what I was doing when I heard JFK had been shot), there are not many childhood ambitions you have either not fulfilled or not given up on. I made it to the Volvo, but not President of the United States (an early disappointment reading…
The Battle Of The BEPS
A hundred years after the countries of Europe drew their battle lines in France and promptly got stuck in the mud, the Paris-based OECD looks like it is facing a long period of trench warfare. Originally predicted to be half-finished by Christmas, the BEPS plan - if it is to be instituted at all - will almost…
The Tax Business
If proof were needed that the Silly Season is upon us, it turned up in our mail box a few days ago. Slowly ripping open the envelope housing last week's Economist, I noticed an 'x' peeping out at me from the partially-revealed cover. Excited by the prospect of 'tax' finally having hit the headlines of the world's…
Nowhere to hide
Tax Break has just had its longest break since its inception in 2011 due to the difficult period Israel has been going through. The post below is more sober than usual (in fact, for some people, it might be downright depressing). Please do not adjust your computers - normal service will be resumed as soon…
Down Wiv Skool
I was chatting the other night with my middle son when he came out with the word "procrastinate". He also knew what it meant - not bad for a young man neither born nor bred in an English-speaking country. While 'procrastinate' is not as complicated as 'antidisestablishmentarianism,' the word does have as many syllables as that old spelling bee…
Deading The Fat Man
Moral Dilemma - two words that do not feature prominently , jointly or severally, in the tax advisor's lexicon. In the first half of the 20th Century when world wars were all the rage, moral dilemmas evolved from the gritty reality of combat. By the late sixties serious debate was banished to the periphery of existence…
Go ahead punk, make my day
"This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." In the 1960s, while the mission may have been impossible, information protection was very possible. Burned, swallowed or - until a bunch of bored students were looking for something to do at the US Embassy in Teheran - shredded, there was no difficulty eradicating the evidence from the face of the earth.…
Whole in one
"I said: 'Remember Lot’s wife. Never look back.' I don’t know whether Henry had read the Old Testament or not, but I had, and he got the point." Thus spake that most Nietzschean of US Presidents, Richard Milhous Nixon, to Sir David Frost back in 1977, mocking his former Secretary of State's qualms about invading…
Tax Break 