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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’m in Parliament House Canberra.

We’ve talked about this before… reverse factoring.

Let’s stamp it out.

Here’s our quick YouTube post from Parliament calling for action:  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...

They are very good, you know! That is, big businesses are really good at working out how to ‘do over’ their small business suppliers.

Perhaps big businesses are most creative in the ‘gotcha’ game in the way they avoid paying small business people on time. Ooops, or sometimes even avoid payment?

Australia’s largest construction conglomerate, CIMIC, has been outed. It has been reported that instead of paying its small business suppliers within 30 days, it’s going to be 65 days! Ah—very smart! And get this: They are doing this on state government-funded projects such as Melbourne’s Metro Trains and Brisbane’s Cross River Rail.  More...

Is politics in democracies now bonkers? Does no-one respect experts and authority anymore? Has politeness disappeared from political discussion? Is intimidation destroying free speech? 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...

Finally, a reaction is happening from ‘the peoples’ parliament

I was in London in early August networking with key campaigners on UK small business tax issues. This included our long-time friends at contractorcalculator and (separately) the Association for Independent Professionals and the Self Employed (IPSE). The reason for meeting up with our friends was to achieve a deeper understanding of the behaviour of taxing authorities internationally. More...