New title means it's time to act mature and responsible
This week's column carries a small change to all others that have gone before it in the last line at the very bottom. If you peek briefly, you will see that the partners of Arthur Andersen have elected me to join them in that privileged status, and now I have some new business cards with a very nice title to go with it.
It would be very self-indulgent of me to spend the entire column going on about it, so I do intend to write something that involves the word tax somewhere along the line, but let's see how far we get before I run out of space and whether there's any space for that!
The immediate comment from one client (you know who you are!) was that this gives him the additional incentive he needs to ensure that the deal we have been working on for the last 12 months closes before Aug. 31, so that all of my time is at the old rates. Needless to say, in view of the amount he has spent this year, he requested first call over the increased client lunch budget, which will take effect from Sept. 1. I'm happy to oblige on that one.
In view of my enhanced status in life I immediately booked out Restaurant 99 for drinks for some friends. "Tell them it's for me," I told my long-suffering secretary Ewa as she called to book it. "They've never heard of you," she told me afterward. It wasn't like that when Ray was there! Sensing that this is only a temporary phenomenon, I applied to have my ban from sitting on the comfy couch at Stoney Point Java lifted. (It's a long story. Personally I believe that it's pretty silly to have light-colored furniture in a cafe selling dark brown coffee, but my view is in a minority here.) That application was rejected as well, despite my comments in the application that now I am officially recognized as being mature and responsible. However, I'm apparently in good company the names of those banned from the couch reads like a "who's who" of the Warsaw international business community. It has been rumored that money changes hands to enable people to buy themselves onto the list, because they don't look tough enough if they're not on it (again this person knows who he is ).
But then comes the excitement. More meetings to go to! I think I've spent more time in internal meetings in the last week or two than in the past year. It's all good interesting stuff that I can't possibly report here, as the competition would be quaking in their boots if they knew what's going on. Being the new boy for the first time in several hundred years, I was too shy to avoid being nominated for follow-up work before the next meeting, but having responsibility for the seating plan "because it's a boring job and you're the most junior partner" was ample compensation. If control of the seating plan doesn't give you power and responsibility then I don't know what does, but then again when you have to allocate the bigger offices to your elders and betters then the flexibility does decline a bit. But I managed to ensure that my group remains nearest the coffee machine, which you have to admit, is pretty crucial in modern office life, particularly if you've been banned from the comfy couch in the aforementioned Stoney Point. (Matt, that's two mentions now doesn't that count for anything?).
You will be pleased to know however that there are no plans to stop writing the column, and that "Tax Watch" will continue in it's traditional condition for the foreseeable future. We will continue to stick out the tongue of the tax advising community behind the back of the tax authorities to try and look dead hard, then run round the corner as fast as we can before they turn around and come after us with a big stick.
As long as the Polish tax laws remain as interesting and exciting as they have been in my seven plus years of practicing Polish tax, there shouldn't be a shortage of things to write about.
And now you get the benefit of saving even more money by spending only eight zloty for a WBJ rather than calling me up personally (Hmm, thinking like a partner now maybe I shouldn't have said that!). Maybe it will take slightly more than a week for mature and responsible to take full effect, but I am trying as hard as I can
Peter Ferrigno is a partner in the Warsaw office of Arthur Andersen.
