Is it possible to explain the essence of such complex things clearly – why yes of course it is – and that is a skill that some are able to exploit to make a living from.

The guardian tesco thing seemed to be more about the demonisation of tax avoidance and tax planning that Gordon and his mob are trying to engineer – tesco was simply trying to manage the political risk. the guardian was hoist by its own hypocracy – quite right to. I don’t buy that the guardian did not have the expertise – sounds like no more than a rather pathetic excuse.

In fact most tax planning schemes are equally hard to follow. This includes those punted at owner managers, company directors, property developers and everyone else keen to reduce their liability to IHT, NICs, CGT and SDLT. As a result the promoters of such schemes will often tap into the taxpayer’s greed and suggest that their accountant is ‘only’ a general practitioner and ‘this is all a bit beyond what they’re used to really’. They suggest that accountants who don’t follow them should simply trust the promoters. Occasionally the lure of a healthy commission takes over…..

As I have pointed out elsewhere this is a dangerous route for any accountant to follow. Many prefer to either:
a) only work with genuinely independent and objective tax specialists; or
b) NOT get involved in promoting abusive avoidance schemes to their clients.

Either approach is justifiable. The professional bodies discourage their members from advising on matters that are outside of their comfort zones. Contrary to the impression given by some promoters, an accountant will never be found negligent for failing to tell clients about the availability of sophisticated schemes he doesn’t understand. And there is no obligation on him to devote time and effort trying to work them out either.

Interestingly enough, the Star is run according to the wishes of its founder’s will… details nicely summarized here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Star#Atkinson_Principles

The essence? That Rusbridger and his journalists did an appalling job on that story. When I blogged it when it came out I had comments within the hour telling me that they’d ballsed it up. It really isn’t that the story was that complicated. It was those reporting it didn’t have the first clue.

The importance of the topic? I make my living (or at least a decent chunk of it) writing about economics, taxes and the rest of it. Sure I know how important it is. Which is precisely why I’d like to see people doing it rather better. A few pieces I’d like to see in, say, The Guardian. What is tax incidence and what is the incidence of corporation tax? Why are we making people who earn minimum wage pay income tax? Richard Murphy’s missing billions and the tax gap. Why aren’t people prepared to point out his logical error? That a difference between headline rate and effective rate does not mean either avoidance or evasion: it can (and certainly does in part) mean that people are using the allowances that Parliament has expressly created for them to use.

Picture this. What would one of your actions be if you were working for a large media organisation researching a tax story? One of mine would be to go to that media organisations internal tax accountants and ask, “Err, have I got this right?”. As an editor I’d certainly ask the in house boffins to look it over. Neither happened. This isn’t “problems of reporting” this is “problems with reporters and editors.”