How to handle a tax prat

KEY POINTS

• Tax avoidance in the public eye.
• Dealing with criticism.
• Complexity of the tax law.
• Customise responses.

We are all tax professionals here right? We get it. We understand. There is a continuum that goes from tax planning via tax avoidance to tax evasion and we are always on the right side of it.

There is something very soothing about being in a civilised discussion with people who speak the same language.

I am sure we all appreciated the identification of Margaret Hodge as a “tax prat” for her chairmanship of the public accounts committee particularly the session where they tried to pull a Paxman on the Big Four.

Even the people in HMRC were annoyed: that comment about the size of their brains is going to rankle for...