MORAL LEADERSHIP

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1936, Page 4

MORAL LEADERSHIP

ONUS ON ACCOUNTANCY PROFESSION

Professor J. H. Jones, of the Department of Economics. Leeds University, has given an impressive reminder to accountants that vitally important guidance is expected from them by the Pl “ The public expects moral leadership from your profession,” he stated in a recent lecture. “It wants to feel that you will not acquiesce in the deficiencies of the law as it stands at present, but that, as far as you can, you will press for a higher standard of behaviour in this connection than the lowest that is permitted by law. If you do not do this, then you will simply be regarded as financial policemen. I know that firms do employ moral suasion; I also know that business houses like to secure the services of accountants of high repute in their own profession. “I trust that my provocative words will not be interpreted as an indictment of the calling as a whole. I merely ask whether you are doing all that is possible in the directions that I have indicated and thereby supporting the claim that accountancy is a public service in the best sense of the words.

Second Function.

“I turn next to the second function of the accountant, which is to assist taxpayers in preparing financial statements for the Inland Revenue Department. Here again it is the duty of accountants to regard themselves as public servants, collaborating informally with the inspector of taxes, rather than to pose as experts who will find all possible means of escaping income taxation. It is a tribute to the profession that qualified accountants are accepted in this capacity. Nevertheless, it is well known that some less reputable accountants, pride themselves upon their ability to detect avenues of escape from taxation and therefore attract that type of taxpayer who hopes to -evade his obligations.

“Some of those who advertise themselves as tax experts hope to collect clients not because they are experts on the income tax, but because they are experts on the loopholes that the Finance Act leaves through which they may escape from taxation, A man who has specialised merely in those loopholes and relies for his income upon the knowledge that he has thus acquired can scarcely claim to be a true member of a profession. 1 “While it is true that a taxpayer is not morally bound, in any circumstances, to pay over the actual legal requirements, that fact does not place the tax expert of the type that I have indicated upon a high moral plane. But he is the exception, and would not be regarded by any of you present as typical of your profession. Your status has been improved and your prestige enhanced since the war by the place that you now occupy in the general administration of the law relating to income taxation.”