Nearly 100 UK publishers registered as charities - including the giant Oxford University Press - are facing new rules that could revoke their tax-exempt status and force them to pay millions in corporation tax.
Last week the Charity Commission (CC) published its Draft Guidelines on Public Benefit, a blueprint for how it will interpret the Charities Act 2006, which comes into force in early 2008. The act will require charitable publishers to demonstrate - rather than have it taken for granted - that they benefit the public. A CC spokeswoman said: "Previously, charities that promoted education or religion were automatically given charitable status. That will no longer be the case." The CC will consult with charities for three months before issuing its conclusions in October.
OUP had a turnover of £448m and a profit of £65m in the year to end-March 2006. A commercial publisher with that profit would expect to pay £19m in corporation tax. Cambridge University Press, also a charity, had a turnover of £143.6m in the year to end-April 2006 and a net income including investment activities of £11.2m. Other publishers with charitable status include those affiliated with religious organisations and other university presses, such as Yale.
OUP said: "The press is a department of the university and has charitable status because it is part of the university and because its activities further the university's objective of excellence in research, education and scholarship." OUP also said it expected to be regulated by the Higher Education Funding Council from spring 2008, and thus not subject to regulation by the CC. But the CC refuted this, saying: "Certain charities can be exempt from the commission for day-to-day regulation. But they would still be subject to charity law, so the public benefit clause would still apply."
Andrew Malcolm, a former Oxford academic and an OUP author, has been a long-standing critic of OUP's charitable status. He said that because of OUP's "obviously commercial nature" the draft guidelines should cause the company "some disquiet". He added: "If I were a commercial publisher competing in the marketplace with OUP, I would think it was grotesquely unfair."
Cambridge University Press, meanwhile, said in a statement that it would be able to demonstrate to the CC that its "work is of widespread public benefit, both in the UK and worldwide".
Tragically, in the very same 16th March issue of The Bookseller, OUP has inserted a special 2-page heavyweight-gloss, full-kitsch-color-with-spot-varnish advertisement for MY SO-CALLED LIFE - The Tragically Normal Diary of Rachel Riley by Joanna Nadin (Nadir?), an ex-juggler and ex-Downing Street aide of Alastair Campbell. The 'learned press' promises "spangly point-of-sale" and the targeting of "key teenage events". Sample quotes: "Nothing Jacqueline Wilson ever happens to Rachel Riley. Even her name is pants. She has got a badge on her Burberry parka from him for every time she has let him touch her minky." (OED alert?) Excellent educational scholarly research, to be sure. Can we please see documentary evidence of the Delegates' approval of this title? - A. M.
|
August 2007: JIG UP FOR DIFFERENT TOTAL ANIMALS?At last obtained and published by Akme: |
|
Late-breaking Reece shock: "tax unimportant, we'd simply covenant our profits."THE GATEKEEPER'S CREEP-OUT
On 13th February 2007 extracts from a probing interview by Mukund Padmanabhan of OUP's Chief Executive Henry Reece were published in The Hindu newspaper, of Chennai (Madras), India. When quizzed about OUP's infamous poetry-axing of 1998, Reece stated: "We really don't have the people qualified to make judgments about contemporary poetry." (So much then for Oxford's Eng. Lit. Fac. - again). When tested on OUP's tax-exemption, he claimed: "It's not particularly financially important. It is more important as a statement of who we are (sic)." (In which case, who they are will presumably find no difficulty in paying all the back-tax they owe since 1978, renegotiating the numerous takeover deals they have concluded in the interim, and then handing over whatever's left of their £200+ million illegal reserves to a genuine charity - Oxfam perhaps). Asked what will happen if/when OUP loses its tax-exemption, he asserted: "We would simply covenant our profits to the university." (Following the suggestion first mooted in the Fifth Appendix of The Remedy, but thirty years too late and totally blind, as always, to the fair trading issue.) As for Reece's fantastic "gatekeeper" guff (qv), I am reminded of an acquaintance who won a place to study at Oxford, but after a day-trip to the city turned it down. "Too many old gates," he explained.But apart from noting that the uncharitable writing's now clearly on the Walton Street wall, what Akme really wants to know is why on earth did all these extraordinary admissions, risible suggestions and ill-considered whims creep out on the quiet in an Indian newspaper published five thousand miles away? Was Reece shyly, slyly kite-flying, by any chance, retro-active pre-emptive like? Kite-flying, of course,is a subcontinental speciality, but in 2001 OUP came down to earth there with a bang. - A.M. Click now for the Akme version or the Hindu version (exits www.akme) |