TOLLEY'S has become required bed-time reading for accountants and tax advisers up and down the land – but the bean counters may be staying up a little later at night to get to grips with the latest edition of the tax bible.
This year's Tolley's Ye
llow Tax Handbook runs to 10,134 pages spanning four hefty volumes – by way of comparison, the 1997 edition had just under 5,000 pages.
LexisNexis, which publishes the handbook, said the 2008 edition would have been even larger if it had not increased the number of words on each page. Changes in tax legislation – including the recent scrapping of the 10p starting rate of income tax – have seen the UK's system become one of the most complicated in the world, according to LexisNexis.
Mike Truman, Tolley's tax expert, said: "We were told that Alistair Darling was a simplifying Chancellor, but while everyone supports the idea of simplification, actually achieving it is another story."
FACT OF THE DAY
£424mTHE "big four" accountancy firms charged their FTSE 100 clients a combined total of £424 million in audit fees during 2007-8 , according to Accountancy magazine.
The most expensive audit, carried out for Barclays by PricewaterhouseCoopers, earned the firm £25m. This was followed closely by Ernst & Young's £24.9m fee for BP's audit.
KILLER QUOTE"THERE'S an awful lot of unhappy people. I don't see a lot happening in the factory in the next couple of days. (Boeing] better have a good screaming offer. If they don't, it's going to be a pretty long and nasty strike."
Boeing worker Hans Ulfstein as union members rejected a contract offer and voted to strike
GOOD DAY
Duke and Duchess of HamiltonLENNOXLOVE House has been awarded a five-star rating by VisitScotland. The 700-year-old house re-opened last summer after an extensive restoration project to create a venue for private stay, corporate events and weddings.
BAD DAY
Approved Financial Solutions THE Financial Services Authority has fined mortgage broker Approved Financial Solutions £63,000 after finding the firm failed to ensure it gave suitable advice and did not give accurate information about charges to its customers.
The full article contains 367 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
