http://www.news.com.au/ Herald Sun Rich dodge $600m in tax 11jan00 THOUSANDS of rich lawyers and company directors owe nearly $600million in unpaid taxes. Thumbing their noses at ordinary workers, they refuse to lodge tax returns and even plunge into bankruptcy to avoid paying. And in the most brazen cases, wealthy barristers working for the Australian Taxation Office are running up some of the biggest tax debts. The Australian National Audit Office has found some of the richest professions to be the most shameless tax dodgers. One in five lawyers, accountants and doctors has outstanding tax debts. The average across all occupations is one in 38. Federal shadow assistant treasurer Kelvin Thomson seized on the report by the Australian National Audit Office yesterday. "The attitude of some of these high-wealth debtors towards paying tax is clearly 'won't pay' rather than 'can't pay'," he said. Mr Thomson claimed the problem was being worsened by Federal Government cuts to the tax office. Hundreds of staff employed to chase debtors had been transferred to help implement the GST, he said. "This is yet another cost of the GST," Mr Thomson said. "I am deeply concerned these wealthy individuals will get off without paying their tax debts." Company directors emerged as a major problem, with 27,000 directors owing the tax office $509million. Of these, 6800 company directors owed individual income tax and their companies also had tax debt. Zeroing in further on big fish, the report found 140 company directors with individual debts over $100,000 racked up average debts of more than $1million. But, pound for pound, the legal profession had the biggest debt problem. About 2000 lawyers and barristers owed the tax office $67million, the audit report found. In some cases, they were being paid by the government for legitimate work but still refused to pay tax. "The ATO (tax office) advises that there are barristers with sizeable tax debts who represent the Commonwealth and in particular the ATO," the report said. Another major problem was rich people across many top professions declaring themselves bankrupt to avoid paying tax. "It is a device used almost exclusively by high-income professionals whose source of income is largely fee for service," the report said. Going bankrupt means you don't have to pay tax - and that appeals to plenty of bankrupts. The report identified widespread serial bankruptcy. Many people went bankrupt over and again, brazenly resuming their business once their tax debts were scrubbed. "Some individuals are serial bankrupts who have entered bankruptcy in the past with little obvious impact on their businesses," the report said. The tax office is chasing $7.4billion in tax debts. Of this, about $4.9billion is in dispute because taxpayers claim they don't owe it. But tax office assistant commissioner (small business) Tony Butterfield said techniques for chasing tax debt were increasingly effective. Outstanding collectable debt as a proportion of total tax collections had fallen significantly from 2.7per cent in 1995-96 to 2per cent in 1997-98. "We are now leading the way in credit management in Australia," Dr Butterfield said. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
