Circle of escalation: Difference between revisions

A [[salesperson]] approaches you with what is, on its face, a narrow and uncontroversial question — one to which, in your direct recollection, the salesperson already knows the answer. This is a sure sign {{sex|she}} is indulging in [[compliance arbitrage]] where, while ''after a fashion'' {{sex|she}} presents the whole picture to the internal control functions, she does so in several<ref>''Legally'' several that is, in the sense of “not joint”.</ref> instalments, each so thinly-sliced as to present only those facts the [[salesperson]] considers sufficiently germane to question (and helpful to her cause).

As a seasoned [[compliance professional]], you adopt the standard approach: [[Limp celery|''ostensible'' approval]], hedged around with caveats deep enough for you to jump into and hide in later on, should shots ring out in the aftermath:

Of course, the tangled skein has not magically winked out of existence. It has simply ascended from your desk, hovered momentarily and landed with a thud on some one else’s. This poor blighter in tax, will have the same aspiration as you: efficiently to pass on ''le petard'' and, to fulfill it, {{sex|he}} will take the same approach you did:

:“''There may be an increased risk of retrospective [[withholding]] which is hard to quantify,''” she will say<ref>When one gives tax advice for a living one gets adept at saying this sort of thing by rote</ref> “''but as long as the desk is prepared to absorb that additional risk then I [[have no objections]] to this.''”

And lo, off the escalation goes to the business. [[Salespeople]], naturally, have but one goal — impregnating their [[client]]s — while assuming no responsibility for the congress should it go wrong. So along the chain it goes, to the trader, a young whippersnapper who will neither know nor care what “absorbing additional tax risk” even is, and who certainly won’t want to be responsible for it. {{sex|He}} will pass it up his line management, a better coiffed version of his charge but with no more insight into tax risk, who will instinctively direct the query to {{sex|his}} [[chief operating officer]].