All News

Last week, we reported the release by the ATO of threats to treat people who’ve accessed JobKeeper (and other programs) of being tax fraudsters. The problem, we say, is the ability of the ATO’s auditors to apply their ‘view’ as to fraud, which then becomes ‘fact’ at law, subject to prosecution. And the only effective appeal is to the ATO itself!!  More...

We can’t believe that, for all the great work the ATO has done with implementing the Covid-19 support packages, it's decided to blow up that good work.

Last week (23 June) the ATO released a statement ‘ATO zeroes in on COVID-19 fraud’. The ATO has declared that it reckons lots of Australians are committing fraud in applying for Covid-19 support (JobKeeper, Cash Flow Boost, early release of super, etc.) But look at what they are targeting. More...

Ah … we really can’t help ourselves. We’ve stuck our nose into the UK small business tax debate. We’ve made a submission to a House of Lords inquiry into what’s called ‘off payroll working rules’. Here’s a media commentary.  More...

We’ve been pretty quiet during January on issuing news alerts. That’s because we’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for 2020. This year we’re making a big push for key reform issues for self-employed small business people. The timing is right because there is heightened political interest in small business issues.

Our 2020 campaign agenda has three key targets, all to do with small business people receiving a fair deal: More...

There has been a major development in the last days of Federal Parliament for this year. For the first time a parliamentarian has made a clear call for reform of the Australian Taxation Office.

Liberal elder statesman Senator Eric Abetz is a former senior minister and government leader in the Senate. Last Wednesday (4 December) he delivered a punchy speech in which he demonstrated why the ATO needs to be reformed. He also outlined a model for how that should be done. More...

It’s not long before we all attempt to eat too much Christmas pudding and hopefully settle down for a decent holiday relax! To all SEA members: our grateful thanks for your support during this very big year. Your membership contributions keep our efforts going, defending the rights of self-employed people.

To all our followers, including the many thousands of our social media watchers: our Seasons Greetings. We’d really appreciate your membership and support. You can join here.  More...

I’ve just completed a two-week research project in Washington DC into the laws governing the operations of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS’s operations are starkly and vastly superior to those of the ATO. The difference is in the laws covering the IRS.

Here’s my brief two-minute YouTube overview of what I’ve discovered.  More...

Perhaps we thought we’d seen just about every ‘trick’ by the ATO, but the statements by the Tax Commissioner to the Senate on Wednesday (23 October) go to an entirely new level. The ATO ‘battle bar’ has just been raised, big time!

What has motivated the Commissioner is the ‘Right to Know’ public campaign being conducted by a large coalition of Australian media interests against the government’s suppression of free speech. This week ‘Right to Know’ released its first television/on-line advert. The opening ‘punch’ in the advert asserts that the ATO can take money directly out of people’s accounts “but you’re not allowed to know…”  More...

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...