The Big Four accounting firms are headhunting senior lawyers by the score. Could this be a way to assert legal professional privilege over tax advice for their multinational clients?
- Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney
Following the ABC’s Four Corners program ‘Digging into Adani’, the question that remains is: why is the project still being pursued at all?
Workers are getting ABNs and being employed as contractors responsible for their own tax payments. This is undercutting conditions and eroding the most important part of the nation’s tax base.
One bank customer whose identity was stolen asks: ‘Why didn’t they call the fraud squad, or the police?’ It’s a very good question.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has engaged in a series of paper transactions to create a A$936 million loss in Australia – effectively a billion-dollar exercise in avoiding tax.
Drug prices in Australia are three times higher than in New Zealand. A key reason is the lack of transparency about taxpayer subsidies for Big Pharma and the companies’ own finances.
How much can a multinational take before its social licence to operate in this country expires? How much corporate welfare is too much?
The Australian government took out ads this month boasting of victory in the fight against multinational tax avoidance. It is no small irony that taxpayers forked out for this bald-faced lie.
Federal Resources Minister Matt Canavan is not only espousing a A$1 billion taxpayer leg-up for Indian coal magnate Gautam Adani to build a rail line but has now called for public money to be deployed…
The NSW Business Chamber insists that arguing against entitlements for low-paid workers and victims of domestic violence qualifies as a charitable exercise.
Australian authorities have allowed predatory online travel agents to shrink their tax base while penalising Australian accommodation operators thanks to onerous commissions and vanishing competition
If the government were to provide loan insurance or loan guarantees, the banks might be more inclined to fund Adani. Taxpayers would then be at risk for the estimated $10 billion in project finance.
Health insurance is yet another sector that is subsidised by taxpayers yet whose financial disclosures are murky to the point of deception.
The Senate Inquiry into Corporate Tax Avoidance has heard stunning evidence about the failure of the tax and royalties system to capture any of the billions being generated by new projects.
eBay still deems its Australian business to be a Swiss business and thereby avoids millions in income tax and GST.
The Australian Tax Office had a superb win against Chevron in the Federal Court last week, but there is something everyone is missing, something that will turn the art of tax avoidance on its head; a game-changer…
As public angst over the prospective A$1 billion subsidy to coal magnate Guatam Adani hits fever pitch, a small company is modestly beavering away on another – more worthy – energy project in Far North…
Putting a stop to powerful corporations exploiting their powerless suppliers would not only deliver small-business votes but would speed up the entire economy.
So on the nose is the proposal to auction off the NSW Land and Property Information Office via a 30-year lease that the Law Society, the Real Estate Institute and the Institute of Surveyors oppose it.
Over-cooked forecasts for demand have justified excessive spending and higher prices. This is precisely what the gas cartel wants: the spectre of shortages whipping up prices.
For those who might wish to check if they are being swatted unwittingly with undisclosed or barely disclosed fees on their investments, there appears to be one solid approach to take: ring up and ask.
Nowhere is the impotence of politicians and regulators more costly than in their failure to stand up to multinational corporations dodging tax.
Confounding the familiar government narrative of reckless spending binges by Labor, the Coalition actually has the record of greater profligacy when it comes to showering billions of dollars of taxpayers…
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