Author: Richard
Posted: 11 February 2010, 15:51:41

There's a coincidence (for my little book of coincidences): someone asked me if I was on the BBC yesterday morning talking about tax. Turns out that it was my alter ego.

Anyway as Richard Curtis – the writer and film-maker – has decided to use his writing and directing talents to get involved in tax, I have decided to use my tax talents to get involved in comedy.

I currently have a script – ‘in development’, I think is the phrase – for a film, with the snappy working title of Four Funerals and a Wedding.

This will be a laugh a minute slapstick comedy based in a fictional Exchequer department in the swinging (as in swinging from one idea to the next) tax capital of the world, London.

The plot will be based around politicians and Treasury officials who seek to outdo each other with ever more outlandish tax plans, which then require ever more outlandish schemes to sort out the fun-filled chaos that results.

Remember that zero per cent corporation tax band? Remember how we laughed?

The four funerals?

That will be tax plans and reliefs that have been buried over the years: taper relief, zero per cent corporation tax, the ten per cent band abolition, higher rate relief on pension premiums for the wealthy.

These are just a few that come to mind and the final top four will be chosen from the crazy laughter they elicit from my audience response group.

The wedding?

That’ll involve the joyful union of Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise.

I was going to write more, but maybe that’s where this film will end, I’m sure there will be plenty of material then left for a sequel.

By the way, do we still have a film tax relief?

Taxation Team blog

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