John Harrison and Company - Charter Accounts

HMRC announced in May that it was to introduce specialist teams referred to as ‘task forces’ to undertake ‘…intensive bursts of compliance activity in specific high risk trade sectors and locations across the UK’. The first task force was to focus on the restaurant trade in London, followed by the restaurant trades in Scotland and the North West. Since then, HMRC have added 'London fast food outlets' as a task force target area and are planning further task forces in both 2011/12 and 2012/13.

Mike Eland, Director General Enforcement and Compliance, said:
‘These task forces are a new approach which uses HMRC’s resources to identify and tackle rule-breakers and evaders swiftly and effectively. Only those who choose to break the rules, or deliberately evade the tax they should be paying, will be targeted. Honest businesses have absolutely nothing to worry about. But the message is clear - if you deliberately seek to evade tax HMRC can and will track you down, and you’ll face not only a heavy fine, but possibly a criminal prosecution as well.’ 

I will obviously keep you informed of developments.

On Saturday I had the great pleasure to meet the eight surviving members of the Rotherham United team which won the very first League Cup final match (now the Carling Cup). The Mighty Millers beat Aston Villa 2-0 in the first leg at Millmoor only to lose the second leg by the same score at Villa Park and then lose the Cup Final in extra time.

The occasion was the Rotherham United v Barnet League Two game at Don Valley on Saturday. The club decided to make the game a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the historic match and invited all the surviving members of the team to the match.

I had the priviledge of being able to get my match programme signed by all of the members of the present Rotherham United team and all of the 1961 team. The amazing thing was that you can read all of the signatures of the 1961 team despite their advancing years but you couldn't make out the name of a single one of the modern day team.

The 1961 team are a very modest and unassuming bunch of people, all of course in their 70s apart from Lol Morgan, the full back who is now 80, but looks the fittest of them all. I reminded Lol of the time I saw him mark the great Stanley Mathews out of a game at Millmoor, though to be fair, the maestro was 50 years old at the time.

Peter Madden was one of the most underrated centre halves in the country at the time and in fact one person at our table had a press report which said the although Swann and Norman were contesting the England centre half position the one who should have been picked was Madden of Rotherham. He was certainly my hero and I have always felt that if he had played in the Jack Mansell Rotherham team (which would have beaten the great Manchester United team of Charlton, Law, Best and Crerand if it had not been for two unjustly disalllowed goals) they would have been promoted  to Division One as they had everything apart rom a centre half and were between his era and that of Dave Watson, who did go on to play for England. He deflated my bubble when he told me that he left Rotherham United because of Jack Mansell, who was never able to replace him.

One other thing that became obvious to me was the resentment that there was to the Pursehouses who sold our star players at the time. Butler and Houghton to Hull City, Lyons to Notts Forest, Bennett to Newcastle and Casper to Burnley. "They were only interested in money" was the comment, echoing what all of we Millers thought at the time, we could have made it to the top.

And what of the opinion of the modern day team? Well I am going to grant anonimity here. There was a feeling that despite the diets, weight training, fitness work, sports science, specilaised training etc modern day footballers don't run anything like the amount they did, something I would wholeheartedly endorse. There were no planned moves and no 'wall passes' (which I remember as being the most devasting at the time).

And most telling "If the ball was on the right side of the field, they all went to the right, if the ball went to the left, they all went to the left so they had no width, if one team had the ball everybody went in the other team's half and vice versa, if somebody went to the toilet, they would all have gone.

IT WAS LIKE WATCHING A GAME IN A SCHOOL PLAYGROUND

I'll never see a game in the same light again.

Dele Ogun came to Britain from Nigeria aged 7. He is now a lawyer, practising in London and a keen campaigner against the top/down federalism imposed on Nigeria by British civil servants and against the top/down federalism imposed on Britain through the EU by British civil servants and politicians. With me, he is a member of the National Committee of the Campaign for an Independent Britain which campaigns for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. He has given his permission for this letter to be circulated.

“The Nigeria experience shows that it is hard enough to integrate cultures within a shared race, it is harder still to integrate races. A permanent under-class with a colour badge is always a dangerous thing to leave lying around. This was my mother's take on the matter when I spoke with her earlier today (although her words were not so high-browed).

“These troubles have come as no surprise to me. The seeds were sown in the short-sighted post-colonial policies that sponsored and propped-up crooks and bad leaders in the former colonies just so that the gravy would continue to flow. The Foreign-Office failed to see that the children of the lands thus blighted would be left with no alternative but to find their way to the Mother country and that unless opportunities here were opened up quickly (i.e through affirmative action) to absorb the new arrivals, resentment would simmer. If there were opportunities in the West Indies and Nigeria etc most of those on the streets would not be here.

“These riots happened on a smaller scale in Tottenham 25 years ago. There is every certainty that they will happen again and again with increasing incidence and intensity if all that is done is to offer more grants to fund youth-centres and mentoring schemes. The solution needs to be much more far-sighted. The solution lies where the problem was created, in the Foreign Office. It requires a truly ethical foreign-policy that recognises a shared interest in a peaceful Britain and in viable former colonies. It requires recognising that the tide of immigration is best arrested, and then reversed, by advice and support that will leave these former colonies viable so as to attract their people back home (which is where they really want to be). This is not to be done by DFID giving Nigeria, for example, with all our wasted oil-billions, "financial aid" but by sharing political experience such as the Devolution Bill to manage our own internal contradictions that were created by the colonial encounter.

Dele Ogun, Solicitor, London”

The First Tier Tribunal has heard the case of Russell Francis Interiors relating to a penalty imposed regarding the failure to take reasonable care in completing A VAT return.

Russell Francis Interiors was in the furniture business and held a small property portfolio, which the taxpayer had opted to tax. In May 2009 the owner exchanged contracts for the purchase of a commercial warehouse and mistakenly believed that the date of exchange of contracts was the tax point for the transaction and incorrectly claimed the VAT Input Tax in the quarter 06/09. For Capital Gains Tax purpses the date of sale is indeed the date of the contract, provided that it is unconditional. For VAT purposes though the tax point is normally the date of delivery (or payment if earlier) and this means that the relevant date is the date of completion.

Consequently, even though there was no loss of tax to H M Revenue and Customs, VAT was recovered three months earlier that it should have been. HMRC checked the return and in line with its new policy of imposing swinging penalties to support the beleagured Treasury charged a penalty of 15% of the tax claimed.

The taxpayer appealed, and the Tribunal decided that although the transaction was one off, unusually large, with no loss of tax, decided a penalty still chargeable and determined that a penalty of 7 ½ % of the tax was due.

More care than ever is needed in filing tax returns with HMRC if you don't want to be their next victim.

In yet another example of H M Revenue and Customs using criminal law to enforce tax compliance, a Sunderland account has been successfully prosecuted for the crime of "tipping off" under the Proceeds of Crime Act. This follows the arrest of two partners in the specialist tax mitigation firm Montpeliers for giving advice on how to reduce their clients tax liabilities and the use of the Proceeds of Crime Act to sequestrate £700,000 from a taxpayer found guilty of avoiding £3,500 in tax by notifying HMRC late of his self employment.

These cases are obviously being pursued as a warning to all. It's a sorry state of affairs though where tax advisers are prosecuted for giving advice to their clients and a taxpayer loses everything he has got over a paltry tax bill of £3,500

It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted.

Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.