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In 1970, when the Apollo 13 space mission suffered a major malfunction, the astronauts immediately declared to mission headquarters in Houston, Texas: ‘Houston we’ve had a problem’. Here’s a clip from the 1995 Tom Hanks’ movie on Apollo 13 in which he makes the declaration.

Recognising and admitting to a problem is the first, most critical step to fixing it.

Just a week ago Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan finally declared ‘we have a problem’. But, wow, has that declaration been a long time coming! More...

We’re campaigning to create ‘rule of law’ checks and balances on the Australian Taxation Office. But, while we do that, the ATO is pushing parliament hard for new laws to extend its powers, with minimal if any checks and balances. They do this under the excuse of reining in the black economy.

Parliament and the community should not be conned by this ATO power grab. The ATO’s power push perverts both the rule of law and the democratic process. More...

This is a very special appeal for your help to defend against the ATO small business bully.

We’re asking you to contribute to the legal defence fund for Richard Boyle, the ATO whistleblower. We consider Richard a hero for democracy. He exposed the truth about ATO abuse at great personal risk to himself and his family. We must support Richard.

Richard is facing a staggering 161 years in jail under ATO prosecution. Mass murderers don’t face this. It demonstrates the vindictiveness of the ATO.  More...

1 July 2019 proved an historic day for US taxpayers when President Trump signed into law the Taxpayers First Act.

The Act is intended to bring discipline to the US tax agency (IRS) after years of strong evidence of both its administrative incompetence and systemic abuse of taxpayers, particularly small business people.  More...

It probably had to happen at some stage! For all the criticism we direct at the ATO (all warranted) there had to come a time when we could direct some praise!

You’ll be aware of our intense campaigning against the ATO for bad treatment of small business people. We’ve now had a very good experience, however. More...

You’ll be aware that our biggest campaigning push over the last two years has been for major reform to the ATO. Here’s the history of our battle.

We’ve congratulated both the Morrison Coalition and Shorten’s Labor for recognising that there are big problems with the ATO’s mistreatment of small business people. The evidence is overwhelming.

What’s been important is that both Morrison and Shorten have responded. More...

It is one year to the day since the Four Corners show ‘Mongrel Bunch of Bastards’ was aired. This ABC production exposed the ATO’s mistreatment of small business people. Watch the show here.  It continues to be relevant.

So, what has happened in 12 months? More...

You might recall the campaign hullaballoo we generated in late 2017 when the ATO cancelled the ABNs of 16 low-income, work-from-home, self-employed women. The ATO ‘assessed’ the women as employees. The denial of ABNs destroyed their incomes and forced many on to welfare. After 13 weeks of intense campaigning, the ATO ‘temporarily’ reinstated their ABNs.

The weird thing about this situation was that when we asked if any of the women were not paying their required tax, the ATO replied that it didn’t know. We checked and verified that all the women were paying tax as required. The ATO’s job is to collect tax. But in this case the ATO didn’t care about tax compliance. We discovered another agenda. We confirmed that powerful forces in the ATO are obsessed with the thought that there is something wrong about self-employed people. The ATO seeks to stop people being contractors whether or not tax compliance is occurring. This is the ATO acting well outside of its remit.  More...

We wrote yesterday to thank the many players involved in efforts to reform the ATO’s treatment of self-employed, small business people. Today we explain what that reform is and why it’s important.

The reform is the creation of the Small Business Tax Tribunal (SBTT) that started on 1 March. It’s a division within the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. There are two key documents to understand: More...

Okay, get ready for it. In this update we’re going to praise a lot of people.

The reason is that it’s looking as though the sort of reform we need from the ATO in its treatment of small business people is actually happening. See this article in today’s Australian.

It's all to do with this document released on the ATO’s website last Friday (22 March). Frankly, we’re surprised how far this is developing. We’ll explain this in detail tomorrow with the key being the operation of the Small Business Tax Tribunal.  More...