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Goodness. We had lots of people respond to our last news alert of (boring) summer tax reading. Large numbers of people downloaded our December submissions to Parliamentary and Treasury reviews of the Australian Taxation Office.

So we thought we’d enliven your summer reading even more! This time it’s the submission we made to Treasury in its review of Australian Business Numbers.

Over the last few years the ATO has been aggressively denying individuals access to ABNs and cancelling ABNs. There’s been an attitude that many people are not really running small businesses. The ATO reckons that it can identify a ‘real’ business from a ‘sham’ business.  More...

We trust the Xmas pudding and New Year champers have worked through your system and you now feel suitably relaxed as the new business year slowly winds back up.

If you’re after some ‘exciting’ tax reading (yawn!), we had bit of a flurry of submissions we needed to get to the government and parliament before Christmas. Here are a couple of them. More...

The construction sector has high numbers of self-employed, independent contractors, but it’s an area that has always attracted significant controversy.

While the industry is in holiday shutdown we thought subbies (in between watching cricket, fishin’ and so on) might have a minute or two to catch up on new enforcement processes important to their businesses.  More...

In what would seem a rather startling revelation in The Australian yesterday, Robert Gottliebsen comments that, pending an explanation, in his view

“…as it now stands, there is one law for the alleged criminals and another for law-abiding, taxpaying people.”

He asks how this is possible and says:

“One explanation is that the ATO is completely above the law and not subject to any laws that elected politicians may choose to pass.”

 More...

Last Wednesday we had a thank you dinner for Norman Lacy, our Chair of 10 years and board member since our formation 18 years ago.

Norman has finally decided to step aside from Self-Employed Australia. We had a wonderful dinner which included a presentation and discussion from Robert Gottliebsen, business columnist for The Australian on current business, economic and political events.  More...

Late last night the news broke of the Morrison government’s decision to create a Small Business Tax Tribunal. Robert Gottliebsen in The Australian has scooped the story.

We launched a campaign in February last year for a Small Business Tax Tribunal. Obviously, we are hugely pleased to see the Morrison government take this initiative for fair treatment of small businesses.  More...

Yes, well it’s pretty obvious that the political system is in chaos. But despite the turmoil we thought we’d give you some updates on a few more sane things (from our perspective) that are coming through.

Free legal advice in ATO disputes
The Labor opposition is talking of funding free legal advice on tax matters to low-income taxpayers if they win government. It’s further recognition by Labor of the unequal power relationship between small business people and the ATO.  More...

You may have seen the big ‘win’ by the ATO against BHP which has agreed to pay an extra $529 million in tax. In a statement an ATO spokesperson said: “I want to assure the Australian community the ATO does not settle matters at any cost or give favourable settlements to the large end of town.” Ummm? Let’s look at the evidence. More...

The ABC reports that a Federal anti-corruption commission is looking increasingly likely. This five-minute ABC television clip explains that:

• Federal Labor has a policy to introduce a National Integrity Commission to investigate possible corruption within the Federal Government.
• The Senate has been conducting an inquiry into an anti-corruption commission.
• Last week the Senate passed a motion calling for a debate on the issue.

and

• The Federal government is apparently considering an anti-corruption commission.

But here’s a question. Will an anti-corruption commission be able to investigate the Australian Taxation Office? Would the ATO fight hard to be excluded? More...

In an article in The Australian today ('When the Taxman proves to be a monster)'  we argue that the prosecution powers of the Australian Taxation Office should be removed from the ATO and transferred to an independent body under the Attorney-General’s department.

We give examples of the ATO’s alleged abusive behaviour in litigation to demonstrate why the ATO should not be investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury all in one. This is the current situation.  More...