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Wikipedia:Featured article review/United Kingdom corporation tax/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept 09:14, 29 May 2007.

United Kingdom corporation tax

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Review commentary

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Messages left at User talk:Jguk, UK notice board, and B&E. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article has no inline references at all. Nssdfdsfds 15:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. This has been on my long list ever since jguk pushed it to FA in early 2005. I will have to see what I can do. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:41, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This was my comment as well when I reviewed it for WikiProject Taxation. Good article but I'd like to see inline citations. For someone not familiar with UK corporate taxes, it is difficult to verify with just a references section. Morphh (talk) 14:18, 04 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone willing to start on a list of the facts that are the highest priority to be cited directly? Basically those most central to the topic and or most controversial if there are any. Even though I know nothing about the topic, I'll pitch in where I can over the next couple weeks, but I won't be able to get to it right away. - Taxman Talk 02:30, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm willing to help out in a couple of days time. I also know nothing about corporation tax, but given time I can usually translate HMRC speak into English, so I can plough through the manual. Do you mean to {{fact}} the necessary points, or to write up a list on the talk page? Winklethorpe 07:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you're asking me I was just referring to writing up a list here or on the talk page. But if you can just plow through it go ahead. I'll pitch in when I can. - Taxman Talk 03:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've started a section on the talk page to collate referencing issues. Please contribute as you can. Winklethorpe 20:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fast track to FARC? Significantly under-referenced, and the prose will definitely need a spruce-up. It's a complicated topic, so the prose needs to be as simple and crisp as possible.
    • "the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988 as amended from time to time." Remove the last four words.
    • "the rules governing corporation tax"—a comma would make sense before "the".
    • "have diverged more and more"—"have increasingly diverged" would be neater and more formal.
    • "The tax borrowed its basic structure and many of its rules from income tax. It is currently governed by"—Referent for "It"?
    • "as of 2005"—update this unstable area?
    • "Neither term is formally defined. However, capital implies something of enduring benefit, revenue implies that it is normally ongoing expenditure." Ideal place for a semicolon after "defined".
    • "For example, expenditure by a company on acquiring a new head office will be capital; expenditure on stationery will be revenue."—Present, not future tense would be more direct. Tony 23:14, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • How would fast tracking to FARC help anything? We've got several people willing to help, we just need more time. If you see prose errors fix what you can. - Taxman Talk 03:27, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • As you get to it, WP:MSH issues to be tended to. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'm sure I've seen that having a heading directly after another heading (e.g. History then introduction in this article) isn't approved of, but I can't find it. Could anyone confirm/deny? On the time element, I intend to make a serious attempt on the references, but have an important RL task to do over the next two days that'll slow me down. Winklethorpe 20:23, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • I've seen the double heading critique in the FAC but I haven't found it in the MOS. Morphh (talk) 3:38, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
              • Ah yes, it was someone on a FAC saying they didn't like it, rather than that it was in the MOS. To a certain extent I agree. In other news, I'm (hopefully) towards the end of referencing the article now. Winklethorpe (talk) 08:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary

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Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations (1c), prose (1a), MoS issues (2). Marskell 14:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Why has this been moved to FARC? To quote from above "The nomination should last two weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process." A look at the page history will show you that I've just spent the last 11 days moving the page from zero citations to 100, and I'm not quite done yet. To do this I've had to learn the tax from scratch. I've only just (as in yesterday) begun to address the prose issues, by printing the article out to mark up. Quite clearly it would be "useful to continue the process", as the task of referencing was so huge that it's taken up the whole two weeks.
The current premature move to FARC means that people will be commenting on the article before any of the prose concerns have been looked at. Please return it to review for, say, a week. Winklethorpe (talk) 10:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it should be moved back to FAR and given another week or so. - I'll work on it when I can. Morphh (talk) 18:08, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The move down here in no way precludes further work on the article. We just try to keep things on pace and I didn't see a close early consensus. Don't worry, it's another two weeks here. Just keep people updated how the work is going. Marskell 10:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree there was no consensus for an early close - the article was clearly in need of significant work. My point was that the move appeared to violate the guideline "The nomination should last two weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process." If you considered that guideline and decided that the current case did not fit it, that's fine, just let me know your reasoning and I'll most likely accept it. Winklethorpe (talk) 18:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any way you slice it this has been a major improvement. Fantastic work, Winklethorpe. The most serious problem of citations has been remedied, so what's left is to improve the prose. I don't think the article is in removeable territory now anyway, but improvements in flow of the prose would be well appreciated. I'll see what I can add. - Taxman Talk 19:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments.
    • Tax and Corporate tax as See also in an article about tax ?? Can't those be worked into the text?
    • Terms like HMRC and HMSO are used throughout, but never defined or wikilinked (not everyone lives in the UK).
    • A whole lot of inconsistency in the formatting of footnotes. Please identify PDFs. Most of the websources have no last access date, and I'm surprised at how few of these tax documents have publication dates — is that accurate? References need extensive cleanup — they are mostly just blue links, with no publisher, date, author, last access date, etc. (See WP:CITE/ES)
    • Incorrect use of hyphens instead of mdash throughout — please see WP:DASH Also, incorrect use of hyphen in place of ndash on date ranges. Hyphens (-) join words. Ndash joins dates and ranges on numbers (–). Mdash is used as punctuation (—).
    • See also to a red link? If further explanation is needed, it should be provided. Life assurance companies are taxed using the above rate on shareholder profits and 20% on policy holder profits[75] (See also: I minus E basis)
  • SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You'll have to excuse my inexperience on a lot of these (in the sense of explaining them to me, rather than tolerating them).
  • See also - Tax is already in the article, so I guess I'll take it out. Corporate tax is a rather stubby more general article. I'll see if it'll go in somewhere.
  • part done - tax removed. A bit stuck on where to work the other in.
  • Now fully done
  • In the main article, HMRC is never used without HM Revenue and Customs having been used shortly before it - I made sure of that. Do you feel it would be appropriate to expand the HMRC's, or to do HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to introduce them? It's just the full title is very tedious to read all the time. HMSO is only used in the refs, so I'll wikilink it, and HMRC, in the refs - expanding it would just unnecessarily pad the refs, I feel.
  • It doesn't need to be on every ref; it just neeeds to be defined on its first occurrence. That is, the first time you use HM Revenue and Customs, follow it with (HMRC). And, what is HM ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "HM" is Her Majesty. Until she dies. At which point it's His Majesty. Which is why, unless they're being ultra formal, departments use HM. See [HM Revenue and Customs website] for an example. I know you might think it would be good to expand on it in an article, but think: at some point in a decade or so, we'd have to go and change every single Her Majesty. It doesn't bear thinking about. Winklethorpe (talk) 18:03, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • now done
  • Refs: I have a bit of a problem here. The lions share of the refs are to a HMRC manual, which lacks a named author (in fact, it will be multiple people within HMRC), or publication date, as they are "living" documents (as they like to put it), and so under constant revision as legislation, court cases, or policy changes come in. Publisher is HMRC, as cited. I've got "retrieved on" everything that's online and likely to change - is "last access date" the same thing? I modelled the refs on how I'd seen other FAs do them, as no cite template seemed appropriate (and I've used templates where possible; I guess "internal manual" isn't a common source), but I'm happy to change. I'm not sure how you mean about pdfs.
  • If they have no author or date, you need not supply one — I was just checking. For people on old computers, browsers, or Adobe Acrobat versions, it's helpful that you warn them of PDFs by including (PDF) after the article link. That way, dummies like me won't bomb out their computer while watching the ball game :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • (PDF) done.
  • Dashes - I'll read up on those and fix them (and that one back there is probably wrong, eh?)
  • done (Where done = "I think I've got the hang of them")
  • Missed that "see also" - the original author seemed fond of things like that. I will fix.
  • done
On a very minor note, saying "not everyone lives in the UK" was a little off - unconsciously assuming the reader knows what you know is a mistake we all fall into. Other than that, if you can help me out with getting the references up to spec, then hopefully this will be an article saved. Were you content with the prose, or is that to come? Winklethorpe (talk) 22:37, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I found the prose rough going, but I wasn't focusing. I'll look again; nothing rose to the level of Remove. Well ... actually, what I found rough was that I wasn't sure the TOC reflected good article organization, but I'd need to study it more carefully. On topics like math, physics, and taxes, it helps to make an extra effort at clarity so as not to make the subject matter harder than it is. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I've tried to trim the prose down where it was too wordy, but I've not done any serious rewriting - we'd need to find someone who really knew the field to rewrite without getting things wrong. I know what you mean about the structure. It does actually make sense as a structure you go through it, but there's probably a perfect way to organise it that I can't think of. Vast majority All of your other points dealt with as above. Winklethorpe (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Remove unless a copy-editor goes through it thoroughly. 1a and 1b at issue. Here are examples:
    • "Prior to it taking effect on"—yuck; exposed right at the top. "Had" in the next clause is redundant.
    • "with a single measure, corporation tax,"—Remove "measure,"; remove "many". Remove "currently". Insert "the' before "modernisation".
  • I felt the "currently" prevented it contradicting that the Finance Act 1965 created, and therefore governed, the tax. "Many" seemed appropriate, as it was many, but not all, rules (the point that it was more than simply a rebranding of income tax for corporations needs to be made, I think).
    • "the first major amendment to corporation tax saw it move to an imputation system from 1973 to 1999"—timeframe unclear.
    • "Problems for the tax"—bit loose; "for" for people. Remove "certain".
    • "wide scale reform"—hyphen required.
    • "tax law rewrite project"—does it have a proper title? Tony 02:04, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • It does indeed have a proper title. The Tax Law Rewrite project. Sorry, but the capacity of bureaucracy to give things really boring titles knows no bounds. You can check this by following the ref on the first mention.
I recently rewrote quite a lot of the lead to make it a more balanced summary, so the majority of what you have pointed out is my inexperienced work. It's possible that the rest of the article is better. I've certainly tried to chop out some of the wordiness I found through the article. Would you care to look further down than the lead? Other than that, I've addressed your specific points (except the one you just said "yuck" to), although I've made some comments above. I will try to summon a copyeditor. Winklethorpe (talk) 19:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • This article is still in need of a lot of work. I just spent a lot of time trying to clean up the trainwreck of different formats for footnotes, and found many other things while in there. I may have fixed all the dates, but they were all over the place in terms of formatting and wikilinking. The References section is still a sloppy, mumble-jumble. The Budget is sometimes capped, sometimes not. There is unattributed opinion from a guest columnist here, suggesting that a POV review may be needed by someone familiar with the topic. A new set of eyes is needed to run through the entire article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:28, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well Sandy, thank you for your work on improving the article. However, I have to say I took umbrage at you describing the results of my hard work on adding 100 references to the article from scratch as a "trainwreck". Perhaps "inconsistant" or even "incorrect" would have conveyed your meaning whilst providing constructive criticism - I'm happy to fix anything that's pointed out to me. In fact, I said much the same thing in reply to your previous comments on the footnotes on 29th April. I see that, for example, you have changed my cite news of an article that appears in the Sunday Times print edition, which gave the url to the online archive along with the print details, to a cite web. If cite web is correct, then that's fine, but I made an honest judgement at the time about which template to use. In fact, as cite web is "specifically for web sites which are not news sources", I'm going to need cluing in on why cite web is appropriate here.
  • My sincerest apologies, Winklethorpe. I used that description because I had the impression citations had been added piecemeal over time by different editors using different styles, because of the red-linked dates, lack of accessdates, some missing info, etc. I'm really sorry for my rudeness.
  • On the cite web vs. cite news issue, perhaps you can help clear up a long-standing confusion ... another UK editor long ago changed my usage of cite news for bbc.co.uk articles to cite web, saying it was only an online version. If that Sunday Times article in fact does appear in print, then yes, it should be cite news, not cite web. Do you know if this is the situation with bbc.co.uk ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The BBC site has stories generated from reportage for bbc tv or radio, but the stories never appear in print elsewhere (caveat: the BBC print some monthly magazines, so that might not be quite true.) Timesonline, by contrast, has a combination of reprinted articles and custom content (there's a discreet little "From the Sunday Times" or "From Times Online" at the top of articles). I'd still call a bbc.co.uk article a news source, myself, but I suppose there's going to be a grey area as you move from the major media to minor websites.
  • As the references section has had little done apart from a little updating, I won't worry at you calling it "a sloppy, mumble-jumble". Any pointers?
  • I will have a crack at it
  • now done. The Finance Acts reference is still a bit messy, but as it's better than referencing 50 or so pieces of legislation individually, I've left it. The Legal & General link is broken and I can't get it back - it looks like they've deleted their older press releases from their website.
  • You appear not to like "e.g.". Fair enough, I'll change it. Personally I have no problem with it, and certainly wouldn’t consider it “sloppy”, as you do.
  • On the "unattributed opinion from a guest columnist", I'm not sure in what way it's unattributed? It's by an named member of parliament, writing an opinion piece in an established newspaper - nothing unusual there. It is used to reference a mention of criticism of a decision in the 1999 Budget that has been blamed for harming pension funds. The mention of the criticism was already in the article when I got to it, and so I went looking for an appropriate cite, which that seemed to be. I certainly didn't detect any serious POV in the article when I read it - there are a few mentions of criticisms here and there, but compared to the amount of noise companies make about every Budget, it's a fair reflection of the more notable episodes of controversy for the tax. If you'd like a new set of eyes to run through the article, it seems to me that you've already provided them.
  • The opinion should be attributed to that named member of parliament in the article, with something like "so-and-so said such-and-such" ... Since I'm not familiar with UK taxes, I can't really provide a POV check. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm, I'll see how I can word it.
  • now done.

I added definitions of and the correct links to HMSO and HMRC to their first occurrence in the article; defining acronyms is good practice, and will help non-UK readers with the abbreviations. Please correct as needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know red links are not a bad thing, but a red link in the lead is different. If it's important enough to be mentioned in the lead, can't a stub be written for Finance Act 1965 ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

More capitalization confusion:

  • As the UK's Tax Law Rewrite project[3] has proceeded with the modernisation of income tax, ...

It's capitalized in this article, but not capped in its own article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:53, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Ah right - the story there is that I capitalised it after a comment by Tony, but haven't reviewed the specific article yet. Tax Law Rewrite is the official title, and it was clear from Tony's comment that leaving it uncapped made it sound like a badly written description of the project (the ability of officialdom to come up with terrible titles is amazing). Winklethorpe (talk) 18:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi Winklethorpe. I usually don't wade too deep into FARC, but here are some comments.
That's fine, this is my first time at FARC (or FA)!
    • I'm confused by the use of terminology here. "UK tax makes a distinction between revenue and capital. Neither term is formally defined; however, capital implies something of enduring benefit, revenue implies that it is normally ongoing expenditure." First, the introductory sentence of the article body could be more formal than "UK tax". "United Kingdom tax law"? Second, I don't know how you can refer to "revenue" as "expenditure". Whose revenue—the government's? Whose expenditure—a company's?
    • "For example, expenditure by a company on acquiring a new head office is capital". Similarly, how can an expenditure be capital? The asset is capital; the expenditure is a capital expenditure. If this is what you're going for, it seems either too informal or is giving the reader, like me, too much credit. –Outriggr § 23:57, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is a case that while I understood the paragraph, if others have not, it needs to be changed. It looks like think the original author has done a too-swift switch in what they are talking about. I think they were trying not to use "income" as income is used for too many purposes, and so opted for "revenue", before perpetrating an number of other ambiguities. Anyway, I will ponder on how to rewrite it for that ever-tricky combo of accuracy and understandability. On your first point, it's less usual in the UK to refer to "tax law" than it seems to be in the US, but for clarity your suggestion will be better.
Thanks for taking the time to look, and please flag up anything else you see - my current motto is "will fix anything". Winklethorpe (talk) 19:41, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to add some context to that paragraph. I get the idea because it's similar to the distinction we have in the US between capitalized purchases and expensed ones. Anything with lasting value of a reasonably large size needs to be capitalized. The difficulty in the article is in using the word revenue to describe something that is an expense. Is "revenue" really the word the law and sources use for the concept? If not see what is most commonly used. - Taxman Talk 01:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the improvement. Going back to the sources, I find that corporation tax is charged on profits, which are defined as "income and chargeable gains". Chargeable gains are identical to capital gains, just renamed for corporation tax (literally, the legislation just says chargeable gains are anything that would be capital gains for an individual; I think sticking with capital is best here, as it's a more broadly understood term). Income has quite a specific meaning for UK tax (it's from "any trade, profession or vocation", plus various other sources that basicly cover everthing except capital gains), whereas its ordinary use is much broader, which is why I think the original author opted for "revenue". So would saying something like "The tax system in the United Kingdom makes a distinction between income and capital income" and so on, run into the problem that income usually has a broader definition? Winklethorpe (talk) 21:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we've got another long review here. Winklethorpe is working so we'll leave it open. But the phraseology here is often tortured, so it may still take a while. "Imputation system" needs defining in the intro. Marskell 05:41, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've now explained impution system as briefly as I could in the intro. If it's not clear, let me know. Winklethorpe (talk) 13:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I know this has already been brought up but "while revenue implies that it is normally an ongoing expenditure for something likely to be used for relatively short term consumption" is utterly counter-intuitive. Should it be something like "while revenue implies monies collected [can revenue be anything else?] that it is then allocated to ongoing, short term expenditures, particularly consumables." Or something like that? Marskell 13:36, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have found myself more tied up than expected, but I got perhaps a third of the way through the other day. I will try to finish the rest, but it may be a few more days. And then Buckingham Palace. And then Anne of Denmark. And then... -- ALoan (Talk) 15:20, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Marskell has asked me to comment on here as to whether I'm committed to keeping going with this FAR, which of course I am. That said, I've run out of things to act on, I feel. I'm assuming that where I've dealt with comments above, the writers are satisfied with my improvements. If not, please bring them to my attention. It's clear that I personally can't bring the prose up to scratch, although I hope I've managed to cut some of the wordiness out already, so I'm hoping that with the help of other hands (and a big thank you to all those who have contributed), the prose issues will be satisfied.

Just to show my commitment, I'm going to have little-to-no wikipedia access for several days after tomorrow (it's a bank holiday weekend in the UK). Any issues raised will be deal with, however. Thanks, Winklethorpe (talk) 14:03, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note. I'm going to err on the side of keep with this one; these never-ending reviews need to be closed eventually. Winkle has indeed done is best to address everything brought to him, Sandy has OK'ed the refs, and the prose has seen improvement (and will hopefully see more when ALoan and Winkle get back to it). Marskell 09:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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