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How the UK tax authority got cosy with big business
For Ian Barlow, Britain's tax authority has gone from being fearsome to being really rather nice. In the 1990s, when the accountant was head of UK taxation for KPMG, he argued Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was creating an "increasingly fierce environment" for corporations. But last month, Barlow, 61, said senior American business executives found the UK taxman's approach "refreshing." "It is a tax authority that is much easier to deal with than their own tax authority, and I think that's no bad thing," he said over a banquet of salmon mousse and rib of beef at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in ... (full story)