Postcard from Bishkek

In the United States, 15th April is known as Tax Day. This is the day when tax returns have to be submitted to the Federal government … there are also local “Tax Days” for those states which have a different deadline for the submission of the forms. For the record: The deadline was originally March […]

The other day I was sent a link to a news article that I hadn’t seen before even though it was a couple of weeks old and it’s a page that I frequently look at given my background in Mathematics and Statistics. As I run a couple of hotels, my correspondent thought that it might […]

Regular readers of my postcards will know of m,y interest in Statistics … and the travel and leisure industry provides a wealth of useful examples that I wish I had been aware of when I was teaching the subject. Whenever two or three hoteliers are gathered together, for example, there is one topic of conversation […]

A phrase that I hear over and over again is : Pay your taxes and sleep soundly. Oh, if only it were that simple! Unfortunately, things in real are rarely simple! It doesn’t help that nobody likes paying taxes (even if they are an important and a necessary fact of life – after all, Taxes […]

Taxes are extremely unpopular but are an essential fact of life.  Logic dictates that if we want the state to fulfill its functions then we have to ensure that it has the resources to do so.  As the demands on the government rise, so does its need for additional resources and so many inventive initiatives […]

July 1st is another of those professional holidays which were a feature of the Soviet Union which has been passed over and continued in the newly independent states that emerged – including the Kyrgyz Republic.  This one is Tax Inspectors’ Day! The role of the tax inspector is to ensure that people pay the right […]

According to Benjamin Franklin, there are two certain things in life: Death and Taxes.  In Kyrgyzstan you used to be able to add a third: the annual Tax Inspection. The appearance of the tax inspector was enough to cause palpitations for the Accountant and Director of many firms – even the most diligent and accurate […]

July 1st is Tax Inspectors’ Day!  It might seem odd that there is a special “professional holiday” dedicated to Tax Inspectors, after all, it’s an unpopular job.  There are lots of jibes and jokes directed against employees of the Inland Revenue service – the taxman.  Those involved in the collection of taxes are often portrayed […]

When I was a boy growing up back in Malvern, we used to have a newspaper delivered to our home each morning: The Daily Mail.

The other day, we had a very strange visit from the tax inspector. Actually, there were two of them.  It was obvious that they were from the tax authority because one of them was in uniform.  Yes, tax inspectors here in Kyrgyzstan have a uniform.  He also showed us his identity card, and, to be […]