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Colin talks dirty
Click on the cartoon strip or here to read Colin's latest escapade
Same name, shame about the face…
KPMG’s insurance partner Hitesh Patel was taken aback when he abruptly discovered his identity had been stolen.
It’s a lucrative business, identity theft. You heard it here first.
Scanning Accountancy Age (1 June, page 34), his first priority of the day, Patel discovered within the Insider Business Club a picture of himself staring back out.
‘How dare he!’ Patel railed at Hitesh Patel, director in forensic at KPMG, whose byline was accompanied by a photo of his insurance partner colleague (left).
Could it be that he was the second Big Four partner to become the second victim of identity theft fraud? he pondered. And by a flipping forensic accountant no less the nerve!
Alas, it turns out it was only a case of mistaken, not stolen, identity, TS did manage to use the correct image on its website, though, so at least it got the right Hitesh Patel in the picture frame for once.
Murphy and Teather 'agree' shocker
TS sadly missed the flat tax debate, held at ACCA HQ, but hears Richard Murphy and Richard Teather, arch-enemies in the world of tax, had a good old barney.
‘It was totally amicable,’ says Murphy. ‘Richard [Teather] is a nice guy.'
Ask him about tax avoidance if you really have to, just don’t believe a word he says. We like each other, we just don’t agree.’ Chas Roy-Chowdhury, ACCA’s head of taxation and chair of the debate, reportedly announced at one point that, amazingly, ‘Richard and Richard are agreed,’ before joking that one of TS’s paparazzi should have been there to record the scene.
Murphy also says, apparently with unintended irony, that the debate on the floor was ‘fairly flat’.
Laughing all the way to the court
To say that Howard Nowlan, the special commissioner who adjudicated on the Richard and Judy tax case, enjoyed himself is the understatement of the century.
Not only did he muse at length as to whether the likes of Bruce Forsyth, Ant and Dec and Jeremy Paxman might be able to claim deductions against their tax bills as theatrical artists or otherwise, he also seems to have thoroughly enjoyed watching Richard Madeley’s ‘skits’, which proved to him Richard was a ‘theatrical artist’.
He described one, a take-off of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, as ‘particularly good’.
Imagine the scene: Judy is serving Richard breakfast, and he can’t resist mimicking Chris Tarrant. ‘Riddled with lines such as whether ‘marmalade’ is her final answer, and with the proposition that he will give her one piece of toast but would really prefer to give her two, the skit is very funny,’ Nowlan said, during what must have been a state of perpetual chortle.
A global guide to filing
Lord Carter of Coles, despite his unflappable demeanour, admitted that he felt like ‘Daniel being thrown into the lions’ den’ when he keynoted at the ICAEW’s e-filing conference last week.
Lord Carter has, of course, ruffled a few feathers in recent times after his review of HMRC’s online services. But he knew he was just a few minutes away from providing a fillip to the profession by stating that he was quite happy to look at the deadline recommendations again, if need be.
He also regaled the audience with tales of his visits around the world to examine the tax filing strategies of other authorities.
The Italians, he said, have compulsory online filing but there is a paper element to the filing as well leaving a huge warehouse of paper that no one ever looks at. And while the Chinese don’t force online filing on anyone, you have to queue to file paper returns, which go ‘thousands deep’.
As for the French, as soon as Lord Carter arrived he was taken for a lunch overlooking the Seine. A similar situation has not occurred with HMRC, he pointed out. Yet.
What a load of Crapita
Everyone knows that Private Eye is not enormously keen on Capita, or ‘Crapita’ as it calls the company. Every issue is usually peppered with stories about how the outsourcing company has been involved in another public sector ‘cock-up’, slinging mud at the FTSE 100 group.
So what does Gordon Hurst, the group’s FD interviewed in the 15 June issue, make of the magazine that loves to hate his company?
Does he read it?
‘No’, he says, before pausing for thought. ‘Ian Hislop is a very funny man,’ he adds diplomatically, if in somewhat tight-lipped fashion. TS doubts whether the Eye will call off the dogs yet.
