One Telling Big Number

It is a sad admission to have to make, but I nearly became an accountant.

To be honest, I was on the road to such an end. Having worked for a year or so at one of the big accounting firms of the day as a management consultant, I started my accountancy exams. There was clearly no natural talent on display there, though, and I was probably wise to cease pursuing them when I changed jobs and my new firm was less keen to pay me while I took the time off to study.

However, there are always things you learn from such experiences. One was the value of Tolley’s big, yellow books.

Now the BBC is reporting one of those facts that, to me, sums up the Brown years.  The new edition encompasses all of the main UK tax laws, just as it always has done.

However, in 2001 this needed 5,952 pages. Just six years later this has expanded to a massive 9,866 pages across four volumes! What is worse, it would have had to have been even longer but they chose to save some trees by making the type smaller!

So, by this crude measure, the amount of tax law that every business and person in the UK has to comply with has doubled since Gordon Brown became Chancellor. He really is all about control and meddling with the details, rather than that big picture.  I have spent the last seven years running my own business and know form my own experience the real burden that this law delivers. It will be to the credit of any incoming Conservative Chancellor to reverse this trend and save struggling accounting students everywhere some real backache!