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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 doesn’t seem to stop. The ATO continues to deny that it does anything wrong, but official reviews and reports keep slamming the ATO. We listed in early April this year the string of parliamentary and other reports calling for urgent reform of the ATO.

This time it’s the Small Business Ombudsman reporting on the ATO’s enforcing debt even while the debt is being challenged in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The report finds that the ATO does this on 12 per cent of occasions. This destroys the small business and their ability to challenge the alleged debt. The Ombudsman severely criticizes the ATO and calls for legislative reform.  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...

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...

Last Thursday (14 March), the current Australian Taxation Commissioner delivered a major speech.

He said of himself: More...

On Friday (22 February) another scathing report on the performance of the ATO was released. (See this media coverage.) This time it was from the Parliamentary Committee responsible for overseeing the ATO. The report was particularly critical of the ATO’s treatment of small business people. The Committee made 37 major recommendations for ATO change. (Details are here.)

We’re delighted to see this new report and thank goodness parliamentarians are listening and probing. But we need action now.  More...

Today we give a very big thanks to Ali Noroozi who is retiring this month after ten years as the Inspector-General of Taxation (IGT).

Eager followers and members of Self-Employed Australia will be well aware of our extensive and ongoing campaigns to extract fairness from the Australian Taxation Office.

But not many people (outside the public service) are likely aware of the extent to which the office of the Inspector-General of Taxation has been extracting measures of fairness from the ATO. More...

This year we have been highlighting the unfair treatment of self-employed people by the ATO. We’ve been doing a lot of work talking to politicians from all parties, senior public servants and the media. Self-Employed Australia continues to support and assist those who are under ATO attack.

Now we need your help. More...

If you’re not happy with your treatment by the ATO, you have a chance to put your story on the record. But you need to be quick. We’ve just become aware that the Parliamentary Committee that most closely reviews the ATO is calling for last-minute stories from people about their treatment by the ATO. Self-Employed Australia will be putting in a submission. More...

Breaking news is that the Australian Labor Party will, if they win government at the next election, restructure the ATO so that it is forced to use fairer processes in its handling of tax disputes. The ALP media release is here.

We are delighted with this first step by the ALP, but it doesn’t go far enough.

We have made it clear (and very public) that our faith in the ATO to operate fairly, even legally, has totally collapsed. We explained this in evidence to a Senate Inquiry in late June. We also provided a detailed submission.  More...