Shame on you (again) Dave

A quick dip into the twitterverse just led me to the article "Paying cash in hand is 'diddling the country', says HMRC's Dave Hartnett", published on The Telegraph's website. Apparently, the country's most senior tax man thinks that:

... householders have a duty to ensure that other people do not evade paying their share of tax.

Really?

He goes on to say:

Paying a builder or cleaner in cash, allowing them to evade VAT or income tax, will result in even deeper government cuts to public services ... People who contribute to the cash economy cannot then complain about austerity measures.

Oh dear Dave, you are wrong and out of touch with public sentiment. He should take a look at the results of the poll taken as part of the Telegraph article, which asked "Is it OK to pay cash in hand to tradesmen?".

There were also more than 1,200 comments added by the public when I last looked. The general summary of them making two points:

1. Householders do not believe it is their job to act like the Gestapo on behalf of HMRC, and
2. Small businesses are paying more than their fair share of the country's tax burden.

When in practice, I was often asked by clients if it was OK to pay suppliers in cash or, indeed, receive payment in cash. My answer was always an emphatic yes. The mechanism of payment is irrelevant to the tax position.

Mr Hartnett has made his fair share of PR blunders. HMRC's public perception is currently at an all time low, I suggest. Publicly inferring that all tradesmen who receive cash are, by default, "evading paying their share of tax" is a scandalous thing to say.

Shame on you (again) Dave.

Do we need the European Cloud Partnership?

It's that time of the year again, when the great and the good decamp to Davos. An expensive location for an expensive talking shop.

Apparently, one of the new ideas announced today is the European Cloud Partnership.

I was intrigued when I saw the announcement but when I read the text of the speech I was a little lost. I am not sure exactly what this new initiative is designed to achieve. There is talk of first results in 2013 but no clear explanation of what results are hoped for.

What we can clearly see, is that the project will have a budget of $13 million.

Now, I assume that as far as the supplier side is concerned, Cloud vendors would be very happy to talk about how to remove barriers to their wares being purchased. So no cost there. The Eurocrats on the buyer side, representing government procurement, are presumably already salaried and so already paid for their input. This leaves me wondering where the $13 million will be spent.

First class travel, expensive hotels, restaurants and meeting facilities?

Does your website reflect your niche?

In a previous post I wrote about an accountancy firm (Pearson & Associates) who make it very clear on their website what type of clients they are looking to work with. They use the potential size and aspirations of businesses as the criteria for taking them on as clients - using monthly fee packages as the guide.

Yesterday I was introduced to Amy Taylor Accountancy, via Twitter. Amy asked what people thought of her new website and I replied saying it had a very feminine feel. Amy's response to that was:

Thanks Adrian. It is a bit girly isn't it, but as Mums in business is the niche I am serving, hopefully they will like it!

So, whilst being less overt than Pearson & Associates about the type of clients she is aiming to work with, nonetheless Amy is making her position clear by using a coherent design syle that will appeal to her target market - mums in business. Her site visitors will be subconsciously qualifying themselves.

Too often I see websites where accountancy firms make bold statements about the niche(s) they wish to specialise in but where the site design makes no concessions to those niches. Amy hasn't made the same mistake.