Letters
Absurd lack of regulation.
Concerning the report in Accountancy Age (‘Move to round up cowboy accountants’ page 2, 16 August) of a plan to lobby in the hope of getting the word ‘accountancy’ recognised as a legal term with restricted use, I feel this would be difficult as it would be easy to side-step with phrases like ‘business adviser’ or ‘tax consultant’.
I consider that it would be far easier to legislate that somebody who acts as a ‘tax accountant’ as already defined in TMA 1970 shall be required to be a member of a prescribed professional body (e.g. ACCA, CIoT etc).
To be fair there would of course need to be a grandfathering of existing unqualifieds into say a resurrected Association of Authorised Public Accountants.
I find it quite absurd that there is still no regulation at all in the field of taxation. My understanding is that a person can be struck off, convicted of fraud, made bankrupt etc and still offer tax services to an unsuspecting public.