The scene in Disney's Snow White, where the wicked witch entices the heroine with a poisoned apple, has fueled the nightmares of generations of kiddies since it first saw the light of day (or should that be 'the dark of night'?) in 1937. I had double the reason to be terrified as my parents had…
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…
Taking the mojo out of inversions
By now, everybody has heard of the aborted takeover of British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca by US giant, Pfizer. The latest in a series of US corporate inversions, the new corporate structure was to be headed by the smaller UK company, thus largely spiriting the merged group beyond the lascivious tentacles of the US Internal Revenue Service. Fascinated by…
Foul!
"I fail to understand why any of you would be interested in twenty-two illiterate young men kicking an inflated pig's bladder around an oblong of grass." A bible-bashing preacher doing the rounds of Lancashire's pubs in late-Victorian England? Not quite. Actually, the headmaster of my school (see previous post) in mid- 1973 berating a hodgepodge of gormless…
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…
Tax Break 