Duty and Customs Column

I was reflecting the other day that if I had attempted to become a writer of fiction rather than following the more prosaic occupation of journalism it would have been difficult to come up with a more astonishing narrative than that which surrounds Customs & Excise as a result of the London City Bond affair. It is now becoming apparent that practices revealed by the LCB case may not be limited merely to diversion frauds on excise duty; it now appears that practices of the same kind may have been in operation in large swathes of the remainder of the department's work. Don Mavin recently commented in The Tax Journal in his usual lucid style on...