This week's opinion

It is always tempting to view the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Many of us including me sometimes look back with nostalgia to a time when relationships with the Revenue were positive when the local district inspector knew all the accountants on his patch – it was nearly always ‘his’ patch – and disputes were conducted in a gentlemanly fashion with respect for the law and the rights of individuals.

So when I recently acquired a book on what we used to call back duty – tax investigations – by Ronald Staples founder of this magazine and first president of the Institute of Taxation I had a shock. Writing in 1931 he did not pull his punches. The preface begins: ‘Eighty per cent of the back duty settlements in this country are reached as a result of bluff on the part of the Revenue...