Leading tax advisers have defended the role of the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers (WCOTA), a livery company of the City of London, after an influential tax campaigner said he found the company’s links to the City and its Lord Mayor ‘ever so slightly sinister’.
The company is a charitable and benevolent organisation, Peter Gravestock, Master of WCOTA, told Tax Journal. ‘We are not political and the Worshipful Company does not lobby.’
The company was founded as a Guild in 1995 by leading members of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, became the 107th livery company of the City of London in 2005, and was granted a Royal Charter in 2009.
Nicholas Shaxson, author of a book on tax havens and a campaigner for the Tax Justice Network, has described the City of London as ‘this unique body in British politics which is partly a local authority, partly a lobbying organisation for financial freedom and liberalisation, and partly an institutionalised grand Old Boys’ network’.
He listed on his blog ten members of the company’s ‘Lord Mayor’s Briefing Group’, including the group’s chairman Paul Morton, who is also Head of Tax at Reed Elsevier, the parent company of Tax Journal’s publisher LexisNexis.
The WCOTA website says the company ‘provides regular briefings to the Lord Mayor and his staff on tax matters’. It adds: ‘During his year in office, the Lord Mayor travels extensively, with the status of a minister, meeting ministers and officials of overseas governments and overseas business people. Those visits are aimed at facilitating international trade and promoting the UK’s financial services industry. The company’s contribution is to help him understand the related tax issues and to lobby for improvements.’
‘Please forgive me if I find all this ever so slightly sinister. You may feel that this is all somehow a good thing. ''.'''Nicholas Shaxson |
Members of the company must be either ‘Chartered Tax Advisers or individuals who are or were engaged in tax practice or tax administration and who satisfy [certain criteria]’.
Shaxson pointed out that applicants must be prepared to ‘swear the oath of allegiance to the Crown and the Lord Mayor in order to become a Freeman of the City of London’.
The online application form states that applicants who are not already a Freeman of the City of London will be encouraged to ‘apply for the Freedom as soon as possible’ after admission to the company.
The second of the company’s four stated primary aims is to ‘support the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation’.
Noting that the Lord Mayor’s key responsibility is to ‘support the City of London as one of the world’s leading international finance centres’, and that the Lord Mayor ‘expounds the values of liberalisation’, Shaxson wrote: ‘Please forgive me if I find all this ever so slightly sinister. You may feel that this is all somehow a good thing.
‘I think that at the end of the day it boils down to the question of whether you think that the financial services sector has grown too powerful and hard to reform, or whether you think that Britain needs just more and more finance: the more the merrier. If you take the latter view, you may perhaps find all this stuff benign. I don’t.’
Peter Gravestock told Tax Journal: ‘Our work covers a range of charitable activities. These include affiliations with and financial support of a cadet unit of St John Ambulance in Westminster, the Army Cadet Force in East London as well as other City linked charities.
'Ultimately a well informed debate on tax is in the interests of all concerned – taxpayers, their advisers and the revenue authorities.’Peter Gravestock |
‘It also involves administering a benevolent fund for tax advisers who fall on hard times and encompasses raising funds for organisations who provide tax help to those who cannot afford to pay for tax advice themselves. We also bring tax advisers together with a range of social events and meetings where we discuss the history of tax.’
As an unincorporated association, WCOTA is not obliged to register documents with Companies House. But the accounts of two charities of which the WCOTA is trustee are available on the Charity Commission website.
‘Our support for the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation comes in two main forms,’ Gravestock said.
‘Firstly, along with the other livery companies we support the Lord Mayor’s own charitable work. Secondly, we provide briefings to the Lord Mayor and his team ahead of foreign visits so they are well informed on tax issues.
‘This is a sensible use of the tax expertise of our members and is similar to the work done by other organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation when they brief politicians on a non political basis of all parties at Westminster.
‘All these briefings, like the CIOT’s responses to consultations, concentrate on the technical and practical issues involved: we do not comment on tax rates which we leave to politicians.’
He added that when the Lord Mayor travels overseas he carries the formal status of a minister, and does so as a representative of the UK.
‘Helping to ensure he is well briefed on the host country he is visiting makes sense. Ultimately a well informed debate on tax is in the interests of all concerned – taxpayers, their advisers and the revenue authorities.’
WCOTA is assisting in the Lord Mayor’s new ‘Restoring Trust in the City’ initiative, he said.
‘This aims to encourage and embed best practice and ethical values in all businesses which operate in the City. Furthermore it promotes professional standards and values within the tax profession and more widely is a key part of what we stand for in the livery community. It is very much in line with the CIOT’s professional standards work and examinations.’
Peter Fanning, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, told Tax Journal that the CIOT was ‘proud to provide administrative support’ for WCOTA’s work.
‘The Worshipful Company came out of an initiative of a group of CIOT members back in 1995, who wanted to raise the standing of the profession within the City, and support benevolent and charitable causes, as well as bringing tax advisers together socially,’ he said.
‘The members of the Worshipful Company work incredibly hard, on a voluntary basis, to achieve these aims, and deserve congratulations for what they have achieved.’
The CIOT is a registered charity and ‘the leading professional body in the UK for advisers dealing with all aspects of taxation’.
Its stated primary purpose is to promote education in taxation, working towards a ‘more efficient and less complex’ tax system: ‘Our comments and recommendations on tax issues are made solely in order to achieve this aim; we are entirely apolitical.’
Leading tax advisers have defended the role of the Worshipful Company of Tax Advisers (WCOTA), a livery company of the City of London, after an influential tax campaigner said he found the company’s links to the City and its Lord Mayor ‘ever so slightly sinister’.
The company is a charitable and benevolent organisation, Peter Gravestock, Master of WCOTA, told Tax Journal. ‘We are not political and the Worshipful Company does not lobby.’
The company was founded as a Guild in 1995 by leading members of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, became the 107th livery company of the City of London in 2005, and was granted a Royal Charter in 2009.
Nicholas Shaxson, author of a book on tax havens and a campaigner for the Tax Justice Network, has described the City of London as ‘this unique body in British politics which is partly a local authority, partly a lobbying organisation for financial freedom and liberalisation, and partly an institutionalised grand Old Boys’ network’.
He listed on his blog ten members of the company’s ‘Lord Mayor’s Briefing Group’, including the group’s chairman Paul Morton, who is also Head of Tax at Reed Elsevier, the parent company of Tax Journal’s publisher LexisNexis.
The WCOTA website says the company ‘provides regular briefings to the Lord Mayor and his staff on tax matters’. It adds: ‘During his year in office, the Lord Mayor travels extensively, with the status of a minister, meeting ministers and officials of overseas governments and overseas business people. Those visits are aimed at facilitating international trade and promoting the UK’s financial services industry. The company’s contribution is to help him understand the related tax issues and to lobby for improvements.’
‘Please forgive me if I find all this ever so slightly sinister. You may feel that this is all somehow a good thing. ''.'''Nicholas Shaxson |
Members of the company must be either ‘Chartered Tax Advisers or individuals who are or were engaged in tax practice or tax administration and who satisfy [certain criteria]’.
Shaxson pointed out that applicants must be prepared to ‘swear the oath of allegiance to the Crown and the Lord Mayor in order to become a Freeman of the City of London’.
The online application form states that applicants who are not already a Freeman of the City of London will be encouraged to ‘apply for the Freedom as soon as possible’ after admission to the company.
The second of the company’s four stated primary aims is to ‘support the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation’.
Noting that the Lord Mayor’s key responsibility is to ‘support the City of London as one of the world’s leading international finance centres’, and that the Lord Mayor ‘expounds the values of liberalisation’, Shaxson wrote: ‘Please forgive me if I find all this ever so slightly sinister. You may feel that this is all somehow a good thing.
‘I think that at the end of the day it boils down to the question of whether you think that the financial services sector has grown too powerful and hard to reform, or whether you think that Britain needs just more and more finance: the more the merrier. If you take the latter view, you may perhaps find all this stuff benign. I don’t.’
Peter Gravestock told Tax Journal: ‘Our work covers a range of charitable activities. These include affiliations with and financial support of a cadet unit of St John Ambulance in Westminster, the Army Cadet Force in East London as well as other City linked charities.
'Ultimately a well informed debate on tax is in the interests of all concerned – taxpayers, their advisers and the revenue authorities.’Peter Gravestock |
‘It also involves administering a benevolent fund for tax advisers who fall on hard times and encompasses raising funds for organisations who provide tax help to those who cannot afford to pay for tax advice themselves. We also bring tax advisers together with a range of social events and meetings where we discuss the history of tax.’
As an unincorporated association, WCOTA is not obliged to register documents with Companies House. But the accounts of two charities of which the WCOTA is trustee are available on the Charity Commission website.
‘Our support for the Lord Mayor and the City of London Corporation comes in two main forms,’ Gravestock said.
‘Firstly, along with the other livery companies we support the Lord Mayor’s own charitable work. Secondly, we provide briefings to the Lord Mayor and his team ahead of foreign visits so they are well informed on tax issues.
‘This is a sensible use of the tax expertise of our members and is similar to the work done by other organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation when they brief politicians on a non political basis of all parties at Westminster.
‘All these briefings, like the CIOT’s responses to consultations, concentrate on the technical and practical issues involved: we do not comment on tax rates which we leave to politicians.’
He added that when the Lord Mayor travels overseas he carries the formal status of a minister, and does so as a representative of the UK.
‘Helping to ensure he is well briefed on the host country he is visiting makes sense. Ultimately a well informed debate on tax is in the interests of all concerned – taxpayers, their advisers and the revenue authorities.’
WCOTA is assisting in the Lord Mayor’s new ‘Restoring Trust in the City’ initiative, he said.
‘This aims to encourage and embed best practice and ethical values in all businesses which operate in the City. Furthermore it promotes professional standards and values within the tax profession and more widely is a key part of what we stand for in the livery community. It is very much in line with the CIOT’s professional standards work and examinations.’
Peter Fanning, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, told Tax Journal that the CIOT was ‘proud to provide administrative support’ for WCOTA’s work.
‘The Worshipful Company came out of an initiative of a group of CIOT members back in 1995, who wanted to raise the standing of the profession within the City, and support benevolent and charitable causes, as well as bringing tax advisers together socially,’ he said.
‘The members of the Worshipful Company work incredibly hard, on a voluntary basis, to achieve these aims, and deserve congratulations for what they have achieved.’
The CIOT is a registered charity and ‘the leading professional body in the UK for advisers dealing with all aspects of taxation’.
Its stated primary purpose is to promote education in taxation, working towards a ‘more efficient and less complex’ tax system: ‘Our comments and recommendations on tax issues are made solely in order to achieve this aim; we are entirely apolitical.’
