Austrian Alpine Club (UK) Ltd

The Club's Audit Evasion

Proof that our accounts must be audited

The following 3 statements are factually correct and are shorn of any personal opinions, which means that they cannot be challenged:

  1. The relevant Government website listing audit exemptions for private limited companies states: “Your company must have an audit if at any time in the financial year it’s been one of the following:” (which list includes) “carrying out insurance market activity.” (Presumably to spot and thus prevent IPT evasion.)
  2. As far as the overwhelming majority of our members are concerned, we are quite definitely marketing insurance to them, since if we were not doing so, we would not have them as members.
  3. This marketing of insurance provides most of our annual income.

Two inescapable facts
  1. The Club is wealthy enough to easily afford to have its annual accounts audited.
  2. Auditors are taxation experts, and if they did audit our books they would immediately spot our tax evasion, which is by far the most likely reason for refusing to have them audited.

Our Auditor’s Report

Each year, our Auditor’s Report ends with the following words: ”You consider that Austrian Alpine Club (UK) Ltd is exempt from the statutory audit requirements for the year. We have not been instructed to carry out an audit or a review of the financial statement of the Austrian Alpine Club (UK) Ltd. For this reason we have not verified the accuracy or completeness of the accounting records or information or explanation you have given us and we do not, therefore, express any opinion on the statutory financial statements.”

The key point in their report is that they do not say that we are truly exempt from auditing, only that we consider ourselves exempt from the statutory audit requirements for the year, and statutory means required by statute. They would never have used these words if they agreed that our accounts are truly exempt from audit. Anyone claiming to have read this webpage must be able to prove it by quoting the word ‘Helvellyn’.

The only reason for a Company to hire the services of a firm of auditors is to audit their accounts!

When our auditor states: “We have not been instructed to carry out an audit”, it must surely be the case that they very definitely have been instructed not to carry one out. So what of any possible value to the Club do we employ these auditors to do? Window-dressing the accounts in the eyes of our members?

The only possible reason not to have our accounts audited is to hide something. To hide what? Our tax evasion, of course!

Since the Aditor's Report quoted above is published by the Club every year, then either our Directors never read it or they are totally incapable of understanding straightforward English.


A Key Question

Were our annual accounts perchance annually audited up to the introduction of IPT in the 1994 Finance Act, but not thereafter? Once HMRC become involved they will doubtless sequestrate our historic management minutes and annual accounts anyway, so will doubtless find out when auditing ceased and on whose insistent advice.



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