Maya Forstater

So we have a company which makes a loss of over 2bn, but their management accounts show an operating profit of 600m because more than 50% of the revenue is paid out in 'intangible charges' and your response to this is - move along nothing to see here?

And isn't this precisely the point - the management of Pearson exclude these transactions from their investment decisions and business analysis, because in their own words they do not reflect current performance.

It seems to me that if you wanted an example showing the importance of measures of real economic activity - this is it.

And yet...the write down of acquisition goodwill is not optional under accounting standards, and is almost certainly not tax deductible. So yes it’s complex (and you may disagree with the accounting standard) but does it indicate avoidance? No, IMO.

I think the question is not whether the writedown is legit (we surely must assume so), but whether it provides a tax reason for the apparent pattern of profit misalignment - even in this most unusual example that Maya has chosen?

Seriously. I 'chose' this year because that was the year there was. Write-downs, losses are ordinary things. If the formula interprets them as "illicit" then the formula may not be reliable to track illicit flows. I also looked at LUSH.https://twitter.com/MForstater/status/1012650616932454400 …