Agust Flygenring - semsagt.net

Accountancy Shanty

The question I find myself mulling over now is this: what’s to stop everything turning into the British car industry? Thomas Friedman’s new book, The World Is Flat, includes among many intriguing titbits a fascinating item about the number of US tax returns being prepared by accountants in India — that’s to say, you’re a guy with a house and a job in North Carolina and your taxes are done by a fellow in Bangalore, who knows his way around the W-2s, W-4s, 1099s, etc. If you’re a Welsh accountant and you’re wondering, ‘What the hell’s a W-2?’, well, that’s why you haven’t got a piece of the US tax-return market. But the lads in the sub-continent figured it was worth mugging up on. So in 2003, 25,000 American tax returns were prepared in India. In 2004, it was 100,000. This year, it’s expected to be 400,000. And in a decade or so a lot of mediocre junior accountants in North Carolina will be feeling a bit like Red Robbo did round about the start of Mrs Thatcher’s second term. And if accountancy isn’t a safe, steady job any more, you might as well run off and join the circus.