This week's opinion

The latest report from the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) on the simplification of the corporation tax computation is a typically thoughtful and well-argued document. There is much in it to ponder.

One section particularly resonated with me and brought back some early memories of working in the profession: this is the discussion on page 78 about materiality. Soon after I had left the Revenue to join what was then a big eight firm I was asked to look at the audit file as part of the review of the tax charge. I still recall being taken aback to find a schedule headed ‘unadjusted errors’ which involved some large numbers. I could not get my head around this. If something was wrong why weren’t we correcting it? How could we be sending computations to the Revenue based on accounts that we knew contained errors? What sort of firm had...