Diversity matters
April 18, 2017Diversity matters. It really does. Look, I know all the arguments about asking the people with expertise (the “best” people) and you only look at what they know so how does including the legendary one-legged black lesbian help take the discussion forward, so please, don’t be a bore in the comments and go over them again.
Instead, look at this: the announcement of a Treasury Committee witness session this morning where they will be looking, inter alia, at Making Tax Digital. It’s not about all the witnesses this time being male. It’s not about them all representing accountancy and taxation bodies (because, who else would you ask). But it IS about hearing the voices of small businesses. Remember a few weeks ago when they couldn’t find anyone from the construction industry who knew about MTD? The people I know who work for the construction industry advising them on tax were a bit vexed about that.
If your meeting doesn’t look like the nation but like a badly-organised golf-club AGM then maybe, just maybe, you need to up your game and talk to some of the people affected but outside of the magic circle of “stakeholders”.
After all, that’s what happened with VATMOSS, remember? No-one talked to the people affected, because no-one at HMRC and HMT realised they existed. If they’d looked at their stakeholder groups and wondered why they kept seeing the same faces, well, who knows?
tiintax 
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