Budget 2009 - senior accounting officers - update

With it now likely that the expenses debacle will take a back seat pending the upcoming attendance of the criminal parliamentarians at the Old Bailey, it is time for MPs to turn their attention back to what they are elected to do. No, not the management of their publicly subsidised property portfolios and watching telly, but legislating.

Whilst the annual consideration of the Finance Bill is never a good advert for parliament, the debates are underway nevertheless.

The debate on clause 92, introducing the senior accounting officer provisions for large taxpaying companies, looked likely to get more than its fair share of attention. With the CIOT having devoted nearly 10% of its Finance Bill representations to the topic, and with the Big 4 also lobbying over their clients' predictable outrage at the possible imposition of a poxy £5,000 fine, the debate would, hopefully, shed some light on the real issue; that being what all the fuss is really about ?

It is difficult to glean anything much in this regard, although the debate serves yet again to show that Rob Marris, whilst presumably having some use to someone, somewhere, knows jack about commerce and finance. On the plus side, at least Mark Hoban managed to distinguish between a partnership and a company, but was nevertheless unsure over whether Schedule 46 applied to the former. His previous employer, PWC, and chartered accountants all over, must be ever so proud.

Whilst the debate generally leaves no one, including the MPs, any the wiser over what's going on, and why, there is now an acknowledgement that the proposed definition of a large company should be refined to remove from its scope the many smaller companies that stood inadvertently to be caught by this new SAO requirement.

This should now cause 99.99% of all companies, and their advisers, to stop caring in the slightest. Except, that is, to wait until they are in the clear for sure, and then rename the SAO rule as the SAddO rule.