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Professional ethics
Aug. 2nd, 2007 01:17 pmI'm busy arguing having an interesting technical discussion arguing with one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Taxes.
I won't go into detail, but he thinks we've deliberately inflated the value of a building built by one company for another, so the buyer gets lots of lovely tax relief. He wants to knock £2.4m off the sales value, which will mean the buyer pays £250k more in tax over the next few years.
I keep telling him he's wrong. The complication is that in any case if we do what he says the seller will pay £750k less tax now.
He's just insisting that he's right, and isn't looking beyond the buying company to look at the overall picture. In essence, he wants one bird in the bush, and is prepared to give us three birds in the hand to get it.
He is indubitably wrong, if you bother to read the legislation (in his last letter he had the gall to say "I think section X is less relevant, and what we should be looking at is section Y" - which I heartily agree with as that is exactly what I told him in my previous letter!) , but of course legislation means what the parties agree it to mean - the courts only resolve disagreements.
How long do I have to keep refusing this gift, and how hard to I have to fight? Bear in mind that it's not my money, it's my client's.
I won't go into detail, but he thinks we've deliberately inflated the value of a building built by one company for another, so the buyer gets lots of lovely tax relief. He wants to knock £2.4m off the sales value, which will mean the buyer pays £250k more in tax over the next few years.
I keep telling him he's wrong. The complication is that in any case if we do what he says the seller will pay £750k less tax now.
He's just insisting that he's right, and isn't looking beyond the buying company to look at the overall picture. In essence, he wants one bird in the bush, and is prepared to give us three birds in the hand to get it.
He is indubitably wrong, if you bother to read the legislation (in his last letter he had the gall to say "I think section X is less relevant, and what we should be looking at is section Y" - which I heartily agree with as that is exactly what I told him in my previous letter!) , but of course legislation means what the parties agree it to mean - the courts only resolve disagreements.
How long do I have to keep refusing this gift, and how hard to I have to fight? Bear in mind that it's not my money, it's my client's.
