Counting the cost

It's that time of the year again ! Having spent twelve months industriously working away producing widgets or supplying a service, the moment has come to surrender the "books" to the Receiver".

No matter how hard you worked no matter how creative you were in providing something to sell all is subsumed by the accounts and the importance the accountant and the bookkeeper attach to their role in your business. 

They are never around when the machinery breaks down or your client needs his ego massaged. They are tucked up in bed when the rain lashes down as you drive through the dark wet streets heading towards a cold draughty building site at seven am, or crawling through a loft operating a piece of machinery, milking the cows, sitting astride the tractor in all weathers, waiting for a delivery to stock the shop or coffee bar at a time when there are still two to three hours before daylight.  All this activity means little or nothing as the 'invoices' and the 'cheque book' take on a life of their own, as if "they" were the business.

Every year we submit ourselves to the agony of the 'year end account' but in reality that is only what it is, an "account" of the hours and effort you have put in throughout the year. This paper trail is nothing more than a record of a real time event.

The reason our bookkeeper/accountant rise to the top of the pile and dictate events, making life a misery, is that the accounts are part of the bureaucratic reach into our pockets which the Government make through the offices of Her Majesties Revenue & Customs. It's interesting that HMRC are distinct from the government, historically they collect on behalf of the Crown.

The detailed trail and the enormous cost to business is to ensure that the "tribute" to the Crowns coffers is bountiful and accurate. 

Bountiful and accurate that is unless you are a global multinational company. In this instance the boot is on the other foot and the Exchequer has to negotiate, with a poor hand, how much the multinational is prepared to pay. On transactions worth billions of pounds, over a ten year period, Google offered 130 million (about 3%) which everyone, other than George Osborn the Chancellor thought derisory.

My own paper trail, including the petrol slips found down the back of the chair has been concluded. The Bookkeeper has retired for another year and the Accountant is currently waving his magic wand over where and into which column this or that goes.

 It's a smoke and mirrors industry which has ballooned up over the last twenty or thirty years, particularly, since the advent of the Global Economy, to cover the tracts of the syndicates and the merger rich. London has become the capital for laundering (hiding) dirty money and the property market in London is inflated out of the reach of the ordinary Londoner  by illicit money, particularly the Russians, (who asset stripped their own country) and the Middle Eastern oil sheikhdoms who fearing the upheaval in the Middle East have made massive investment into properties and established high end brands, such that we are, in reality now owned by the people we exploited and denigrated (WOPS) in the middle of the last century.  

Far from being illicit or powerful,  small business is an easy target. This is the time of year to expect HMRC claiming that wedge of cash you thought was yours and had put aside for a holiday this year, the one you missed out on last year, oh and the year before that !!!