Dear Father Christmas . . .
Prospects: Santa Claus is coming to town... What will the profession ask him for?
What’s happened
Well, it’s been an intriguing year in the profession and Father Christmas’s job
is to decide who’s been good and who hasn’t. Who gets a shiny new bike and who
gets a piece of coal. This is how a letter from the profession to Father
Christmas could read:
Dear father Christmas,
We think we deserve a present because we did very well in raising revenues by
up to £10bn across the Top 50 firms, making us more money for partners and
enabling us to pay our staff better bonuses. We think you should therefore
ignore those people who blame fair value accounting for somehow hiding the
impending credit crunch. After all, it really is buyer beware and people should
have known what they were getting into.
We’ve also been good on audit choice coming up with a set of cracking r
recommendations that should, all being well, allow the market to correct the
dire shortage in the global audit firms. OK, there’s not very much in there that
will have an immediate effect and they’re all about promoting other firms with
no suggestions at this stage of how to do that. But hey, if the Big Four remain
at the top for a few more years, they deserve it. As least we managed to avoid
an interventionist approach – the philosophy remains in tact.
Far be if from us to cast the first stone but we don’t think the people at
HMRC should receive any presents at all – not after losing so many peoples’
details in the post. Of course, there but for the grace of God… but that’s not
the point, they were heading for a fall anyway after making so many people
redundant and deciding the average taxpayer was an enemy who had to be hounded
until he coughed up his due. What with amnesty and winning access to overseas
bank accounts, they haven’t been very good at all.
Sir John Bourn at the NAO. Enough said. He’s had enough presents this year
anyway. Michael Parkinson should get something for coming clean and writing off
his investment after discovering that the tax scheme he’d invested in was under
investigation. Too soon to say whether his advisers, Vantis, should get
anything.
Yours hopefully,
The Profession