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Time overseas
Raleigh International, the youth development charity that helps young people, supported by staff volunteers, develop leadership and soft skills through adventure and challenge expeditions overseas, is currently recruiting for individuals with accountancy or book-keeping skills.
The charity needs the injection of valuable finance skills to ensure the smooth running of its overseas programmes. These expeditions operate over a period of five or ten weeks in countries such as Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Malaysia and Namibia and empower their participants to deliver worthwhile community and environmental projects and gain valuable life and work experiences.
The key responsibilities of such 'field base' finance managers and members of the staff volunteer team include budget management, invoice processing and the control of all tax and VAT procedures. Finance managers regularly liaise with the UK head office, the country director and expedition leader while taking on a variety of other responsibilities.
Raleigh International accepts applications from individuals with accountancy or book-keeping skills or from companies interested in giving their employees a training or sabbatical experience. Staff volunteers must be aged 25 or over and participants are aged 17-24. Visit Raleigh International's website at www.raleighinternational.org or call 020 7371 8585 for further details.
Budget lobby
What are various accountancy bodies, forums and newspapers urging the Chancellor to do in the 2007 Budget? Taxation summarises some of the issues raised.
The Daily Express has stepped up its campaign for the abolition of inheritance tax, saying that over 100,000 signatures have been added to its online petition on 10 Downing Street's official website, demanding the immediate abolition of death duties.
The Forum of Private Business has told the Chancellor that only seven days remain for him to take action over an offshore VAT loophole, before he faces the prospect of a judicial review, threatened by a group of independent retailers. Low value consignment relief enables individual goods, with a value of under £18, to be imported into the UK without the application of VAT. Some major retailers running mail order operations through offshore locations such as the Channel Islands, exploit this relief to avoid paying VAT which allows them to offer items such as CDs and DVDs at artificially-low prices. This exploitation gives larger companies an unfair advantage over smaller retailers operating from the UK mainland, which cannot compete. See Update, Taxation, 18 January 2007, page 57 for more detail.
Budget breakfast briefing
Taxation will be holding a 2007 Budget breakfast briefing, sponsored by Chiltern plc, on 28 March at 8.30 to 10.30 am in central London. To reserve a place, e-mail taxseminars@lexisnexis.co.uk.
