A chum, now in his early seventies, has been asked by his bank, from whom he has never borrowed a penny, to provide a copy of his tax return. He has challenged them to explain why. Their reply is in part as follows:
“There are two reasons for requesting this information. Firstly (sic) as part of the banks (sic) review of your accounts we require this information to understand our customers (sic) tax obligations which is supported by a copy of your latest tax return. Secondly, for all sole trader accounts we have a bank requirement to verify the sole trader entity therefore by requesting the tax return we can use this to verify the existence of the business entity.”
I gave up analysing this last sentence.
Incidentally, in due course, my chum will be asked to pay bank charges for the bank’s useless enquiry.
*****
I closed my FTSE short at 6240 and sold 50,000 Avacta (LON:AVCT) to bring my holding back below 200,000. This is only housekeeping.