Friday, October 16, 2015

Which is the oldest profession? Tax or Accountancy?

They were arguing over who had the more noble profession and agreed it was whichever had been around the longest.

The accountant, convinced he'd won, quoted the bible. Even before God created Adam he created an orderly universe from chaos. An orderly universe implied the involvement of accountants to monitor and keep track of developments. By definition some of the angels must have been accountants. There were no taxes so no tax inspectors around that early in human history.

The tax inspector wasn't beaten. He listened patiently and then simply said: "Who do you think created the chaos?"

HOW strong is HMRC's case?

Years ago a senior official was talking about HMRC prosecution policy. He mentioned an occasion when he had lost a case and went back to his...