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  Simplicity Understanding and complying with tax legislation should be as simple and straightforward as possible.2 If taxpayers and their advisers face too complex a tax system and are unclear what is expected of them, this creates the potential for both mistakes and deliberate rule-breaking. Complexity in the tax system distorts the economy, diverting productive energies into non-productive administration. Why is tax so complicated? Tax systems can perform multiple roles: raising revenue, redistributing wealth and regulating behaviour (eg through excise duty on alcohol or ‘green taxes’). These aims may be achieved in several ways: by taxing spending (eg through Value Added Tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST)), receipts (personal or corporate income) or capital. Single taxes may be intended to support more than one aim. Economic growth appears to be more strongly linked with reducing the administrative burden on business than with cutting tax rates. Implementing tax also has...

 With the future of the audit and accountancy profession under scrutiny just before the world’s attention turned to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Brydon review of the quality and effectiveness of audit set out a pathway to lasting changes that will make tomorrow’s audit fit for purpose. Sir Donald Brydon, chairman of the Sage Group and veteran of a number of FTSE 100 boardrooms, was asked in February 2019 to chair a review of audit by the UK government. The review’s report was published in December 2019. In a hard-hitting appraisal of the current state of quality and effectiveness, the report contained some 64 recommendations, which taken together will have a far-reaching impact on the profession – not just in the UK, but worldwide. The recommendations called for a redefinition of audit and its purpose alongside the creation of a new audit profession and qualification. They said that great suspicion, with added onus on the auditor to detect fraud, should be brought to the fore, togeth...

Welcome Few human beings alive today can have faced any challenge as great as that posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. UN secretary-general António Guterres remarked: ‘Covid-19 is the greatest test that we have faced together since the formation of the United Nations.’ He suggested that the only way to tackle the virus was through global coordinated action. And that one outcome from this period of history may be the dawn of a new type of global and societal cooperation. The accountancy profession across the globe is uniting to play its part in tackling the fallout from the virus, supporting and advising governments, policymakers and regulators, and crucially supporting finance professionals as they work with their organisations and clients to minimise the economic and business consequences. The global alliance between CA ANZ and ACCA will have a pivotal role in shaping the profession and inputting to public policy as the world defeats the virus and then starts the long process of rebuildin...