The Pin-Stripe Mafia: How Accountancy Firms Destroy Societies

by Austin Mitchell MP and Prem Sikka 

Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs £8.95

As you'd expect from the University of Essex's Professor Sikka and old-school Labourite Mitchell, this hard-hitting critique of the Big 4 pulls no punches The accusations come thick and fast; the major accountancy firms are accused of being anti-democratic, undermining elected governments and emasculating them with their mass exported tax avoidance schemes that deprive these elected representatives of billions of dollars in revenue. These accusations are supported with a welter of stats: from 1998 to 2005 66% of US corporations paid no federal corporate taxes; in the UK Tory CHancellor George Osborne admitted to Parliament that "some of the richest people in this country have been able to pay less tax than the people who clean for them". The UK Treasury estimates that it loses £40 billion of tax revenues each year (others say it's much more); think what that revenue would do for Britain today.

Thanks to PQ Magazine