People and Business: CIA's error

Tuesday 30 March 1999 00:02 BST

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THE END of the tax year is nigh in Britain. And it's 31 March, according to the website belonging to the Central Intelligence Agency, which helpfully sets out the information that its operatives have gleaned on various countries.

How strange of the American spooks to make such an elementary error. Maybe the last time that a CIA agent stirred out of McClean, Virginia, with a mission to investigate the UK tax year was 1854.

It was that year, according to Britain's Inland Revenue, that the end of the tax year was fixed as 5 April - and has remained so ever since.

E-mail: j.willcock@independent.co.uk

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