No Fun

Spent four wonderful hours today in a lecture on money laundering, last week it was three and a half hours at a VAT lecture - who said accountancy was dull? To be honest it's not so much dull as grinding to a halt under the weight of government legislation. We hear so much about stealth this and stealth that, well there is no doubt now that the Labour government are intent on bringing the accountancy profession into line by any means necessary.

The Money Laundering rules are not just draconian they are out of step with the rest of Europe, actually they are out of step with the rest of the world. We have the bizarre situation where a solicitor is sentenced to six months in prison for reporting a money laundering 'event' to the police but not the money laundering authorities. In other countries throughout Europe you only have to report suspicions if you believe a crime is taking place that would result in a six month prison sentence, in the U.K there is no de-minimis limit, this results in a situation where people are actually afraid to make known any suspicions. In the year 2006-7 in Holland there were 179,000 reports of possible money laundering activities, in Australia (under the same rules as Holland) there were 120,000, in the U.K there were 197,000 of which only 2,000 resulted in investigation - not prosecution, just investigation.

Gordon Brown has told the HMRC that tax income is running out, the well is dry and he wants more income whether through tax legislation or money laundering legislation, the black economy is worth something like £125 billion and Gordon, probably not unreasonably, wants a cut of the action.

Auditing has changed dramatically over the past eighteen months or so and the current financial situation is not helping, next year sees another whole raft of legislation in addition to the final parts of the Companies Act 2006 coming into force. The amount of paperwork we are expected to complete will increase by an estimated 40% from 2009, this is of no value to our clients it is merely to satisfy the current Government that we are following the legislation they are putting through. It's getting to the stage now where I can see some of my more experienced (i.e older) colleagues thinking to themselves, "Do I really need this?" It's a tough call but in the current economic climate and job losses on a daily basis I think it's probably a case of better the devil you know.