Tax Gap

I'm still enjoying the Guardian's Tax Gap series - and loving the fact that Christian Aid gets a mention in the leader in today's paper on the subject.

Can't help thinking back to a conversation I had with a friend of mine in church many years ago. I had talked to him about how my weeks's work had saved a wealthhy client a small fortune in capital gains tax (perfectly legally ....). He paused, then said "the money you saved could have bought a new scanner at the local hospital".

I carried on in the tax profession for many years, working with integrity as far as possible and doing the best possible job I could as is right and proper. But his words never left my mind - I just allowed myself to talk myself out of it being seen as a moral issue. But it is ......

And have a look at what can be done about issues like this and others at http://christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/tax/index.aspx

Well here I am again ........just can't get into the habit of keeping this going :-(

Inspired to just now by a fantastic series in The Guardian though. I have blogged before on the endless hours of pleasure this newspaper gives me. Well now - take a look at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/series/tax-gap . Nothing could sum up better all the reasons why I am so glad to have left the tax profession behind - its utterly without morality. And have a look at this too - giving the other side ie why I so love what I do now -http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/taxavoidance-economy
Alex Cobham works for the same organisation as me, and I have had the privilege of sitting in on various discussions about tax avoidance and the way it drains so much money from the developing world too.

Its been a long year

Well I can't believe I have neglected things for so long. Basically - my role at work has changed hugely over the last year and taken all my spare time and energy - I have a hugely exciting role now which I will tell you all about soon ...and there are quite different parallels and some ironies in relation to my old business career too ....watch this space!

Charity and taxation

Well I have just finished the London to Paris cycle ride. It was great fun, and at times exhilarating to think there's life in the old legs yet! There were all sorts riding for all sorts of charities. A couple of us were riding for Christian Aid, but there were all sorts of much smaller charities represented too.

One thing which captured my interest was a group of around 15 cycling from various Pricewaterhousecoopers tax departments. They were a friendly bunch ...even though they stuck together and did their own thing on the last evening ...they were treating it as a chance to do a bit of team building I think. Their nominated charity was for children with leukemia ...although their charity tee shirts tended to give way to pwc ones ....

I questioned one of them at dinner one evening. Lets say they raised £30k between them. It could be more, could be less, but won't be far off. That's fantastic. But how much taxation which well off fee paying clients ought to be paying - and ought to go into amongst other things the NHS to help kids with leukemia - will they "save" their clients between them once they are back at work????

PS ....

Just as a PS - as I sit here my whole body feels dead weary from training; well over a hundred miles on the bike in the last couple of days training for the London to Paris sponsored bike ride next week. If anyone reading fancies sponsoring me, then please do get in touch at vmv43@hotmail.com

(One of my failings in the profession was not being aggressive enough selling stuff ...well I'm shameless about asking for money for Christian Aid!)

Greenbelt and all that ....

I have had a long time out of the office, what with annual leave and then a hectic week at work and then a festival called Greenbelt. The hectic week at work was due to our fantastic campaign on climate change issues ......have a look at http://www.christianaid.org.uk/stoppoverty/climatechange/index.aspx

When the marchers came into my patch basically it was 24/7 for a few days for the team here looking after them . I had periods of intense pressure like that in the profession - typically around Budgets and pre Budgets. Never such good fun though! I got back from holiday on the Saturday, and was right in the thick of it on the Sunday. In the old days I would have begrudged that and it would have ruined my holidays, but that wasn't the case at all. We got some great media coverage - not down to my efforts alone by any stretch but the need to do press releases and get local press interested and react to them quickly was just like around Budget days in the profession.

Then it was on to Greenbelt. Greenbelt is a great Christian Arts festival which Christian Aid partners with and has done for a few years. Have a look at http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/ I generally think if it wasn't for Greenbelt I would still be languishing in the accountancy profession. I started going along in 1993, and for a few years all the radical stuff (well it seemed radical to a good "in the box" evangelical as I was back then) about social justice and the life a radical discipleship should follow kind of passed me over; I just enjoyed the music and the spirit of the festival. But after a few years I couldn't ignore it any more. One year Christian Aid explained a new campaign at the time - the start of the trade justice campaign. It seemed such a hugely ambitious and dare I say prophetic aim that I wanted to get involved more than just posting a few postcards.

So I volunteered with the local office as a speaker and preacher in churches. Before long I got dragged in far more - Makepovertyhistory was happening, I got involved in other stuff such as volunteer conferences ...and as this went on the tax profession was getting more and more unethical, pushing the boat out further and further with some of the aggressive tax planning I had to peddle ...to the extent that I got fairly schizophrenic. How to deal with it? Head in the sand - do the best job possible for my employer (important but difficult when you are concerned about ethics) ...but then every year Greenbelt would come along and instead of a weekend of pilgrimage and relaxation it became a profoundly uncomfortable experience.

Of course that's all behind me now, and it really does seem another lifetime. Greenbelt is a different experience- consolidation and recharging the batteries, as well as meeting lots of new friends and colleagues and doing a little bit of work to help out at the CA venue. I owe it a lot though, and I'm sure as I intend to keep on going it will become once more in time uncomfortable ..I hope so anyway.....

Some taxing thoughts .....

At Christian Aid we're about long term sustainable development in poor countries. Although any engagement with large business will bring all sorts of difficult ethical questions it seems to me it must come to some degree or other. (Caveat required here - I love this fantastic organisation I'm apart of, but can't claim to speak for it!)

As life in the profession fades a bit - its over 18 months ago now, my ramblings may well develop into something different. However, 20 years don't disappear from one's experience overnight. As I keep a little toe dipped into what's going on in the accountancy world I am amazed at just how far I now find myself in my thinking from where I was before. As I read Accountancy Age ( I now find its tabloid approach far more interesting than I used to when I was a partner) I find myself incredulous of some of the things said and done by "respected" accountants.

Examples? "tax is just cash" says one leading light I used to work - ie you can't equate tax planning with morality or even try and make a link between that and the tax revenue of a country. How did I ever accept that kind of thinking? ...because I did - though I had to to live with myself, and it got the stage where I couldn't.

When I visited Rwanda I saw loads of really small micro businesses, sustaining many people and maybe their immediate families. What i couldn't get to grips with - and I'm not a professional economist or development guru so it may just be ignorance - is how to get from that to a country with a larger sustainable market for home produced goods, and with an infrastructure to support that of better roads, transport, schools etc. Can that all come from aid? I don't know - it will always have its place until there are no more poor with us I suspect ..but I also suspect a long term solution has to include taxation from home grown wealth....which has to come from that dirty word in some development circles, business. Fascinating!

Having said all that - its nice to be able to ignore the business pages and not have to pretend they are interesting.....................

(PS if anyone's interested in the tax issue - have a look at http://www.taxjustice.net , and Richard Murphy's blog at http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/ ...if it wasn't such a pain to do I'd put a link at the side of this blog)

Why?

Apologies for another long break....the intention is to post every week but they go by so fast!

I met up with some ex colleagues in London the other day. They are both now partners in top quality London tax specialist firms. Great to meet up with them, swap stories, catch up - and realise I feel like I inhabit a completely different world now! My heart just couldn't be in the kind of work that they have to do ...sophisticated tax planning for wealthy individuals.

I moved around jobs a few times within the profession; but always carried on moving in the same circles so came across the same faces, kept up friendships/rivalries etc. That's not happening now as the circles no longer meet. That having been said - there's a lot of thought in NGO and development circles going on at the moment about engagement with business, and the crucial role of business in developemnt within poorer countries. I'm hoping that, together with a blatant use of old networks to generate interest in what I'm doing, will bring me back into a contact with a few old faces and names. Might have to dust the suits off again!

I might miss the people, but not the profession. Have a look at this video - it says better than me why I made the move to Christian Aid:



Hoping next time will be sooner ....