Financial Power List 2011

My thanks to Accountancy Age for placing me (at 42) on their Financial Power List for 2011. I also appeared in the list in 2006.

The list identifies the top 50 who will wield the most influence over the future direction of accounting.

42 Ken Frost, scourge of HMRC
Known better as one of the ICAEW’s main agitators during its failed attempt to merge with CIPFA, Frost has more recently, and equally successfully, channeled his ire at the taxman. His blog, hmrcisshite.blogspot.com, has consistently come up with nuggets of information HMRC would rather not have been made public.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC's "Secret" Write Off

The Telegraph reports that up to 250,000 pensioner who, because of errors on their tax codes, have unwittingly underpaid tax will have their underpaid tax debt written off.

For why?

Seemingly they would have an excellent claim against any demand sent out by HMRC, because the tax on their pensions should have automatically been deducted at the correct level, and there was no way for individuals to check for mistakes.

Interestingly the individual write offs will be made in "secret", ie the affected pensioners won't know anyhting about it, as the tax demands have not actually yet been sent out.

The intriguing question that has not yet been answered is, if those who underpaid had no way of knowing that their tax affairs were in error, what about those who have overpaid?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

A Billion Here, A Billion There

CABARET - Money

Accountancy Age reports that Dave Hartnett is claiming that the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility (LDF) could raise up to £3BN by 2015, HMRC's original estimate was £1BN.

The question is will Hartnett still be in his job by then, and will anyone have remembered what he said anyway?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

A Million Here, A Million There

As HMRC continues to trawl through 17.9M open case files, further tax over/underpayments have come to light.

The Sun reports that on top of the 6M over/underpayments already being followed up by HMRC, a further 1M have been identified.

Matthew Oakshott, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, is not impressed and is quoted:

"HMRC just lurches from one crisis to the the next. Any business that ran its affairs like this would have gone bust years ago."

All very well, maybe, but it is the politicians who created the mess by merging IR and Customs, by creating an overcomplex tax system and by appointing an executive committee that is clearly out of its depth.

Headline grabbing soundbites or not, it is up to the politicians to sort the mess that is HMRC out.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Online Filing Deadline Looms

Those who have not yet submitted a tax return for 2010 should be aware that the 31 January deadline for online filing is rapidly approaching.

Miss that, and you will be subject to a fine of £100 plus possible penalties and interest payments on unpaid tax.

Those of you who have not used the online service before will need to apply for an activation code. Be aware that HMRC claim that this may take 7 working days to reach you (examples of where this takes longer are always welcome).

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Nudge Theory

I see that HMRC are indulging in some psychological tricks (known as "nudge theory") in an effort to increase tax take. The mind control techniques are being devised by a special unit set up by Cameron which, oddly enough, the government refuses to disclose the activities or membership of.

As per The Independent:

"One experiment involved Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) secretly changing the wording of tens of thousands of tax letters, leading to the collection of an extra £200m in income tax....

...tax officials who reinforce "norms" dramatically increase their collection rates. The authorities tend to be "quite aggressive and assertive" when chasing late payers, Dr Halpern said. "We will send you a rude letter and say: 'We're going to come and find you and break down your door and take away your children.' So [HMRC] officials had been reading a bit of [nudge] literature and they changed letters on just one block of letters [chasing] £600m in unpaid tax.

"The normal repayment rate is about 50 per cent. The [new] letter says: '94 per cent of people pay their tax on time', so now you emphasis the underlying social norm – and then: 'Even if one person doesn't it has a significant impact'. The repayment rate went up to 85 per cent, [collecting] £200m just in that experiment."

The state never ceases to try to control people, whther by legislation or mind games.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"