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The Victorian government is pushing through Parliament a new Workplace Manslaughter Bill. It has passed the Lower House and is to be considered in the Upper House within two weeks. It is likely to pass.

I explain in a short YouTube clip why this Victorian Manslaughter law can be accurately described as an Act of Evil. Watch my explanation here.

The Bill is evil because it holds that a collective of persons, a corporation, can be guilty of a criminal act. This defiles all notions of criminal justice in a civilised society. Individuals commit criminal acts, not collectives. That is, the Victorian government is deconstructing a core foundation of civilised societies.  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...

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...

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...

Since the Global Financial Crisis, unemployment has dropped to low levels in most of the developed world at least. That’s fantastic. It needs to continue.

One of the important factors in this positive trend seems to be the evolution of work arrangements that enable quick responses to fast-moving markets and consumers. Flexible work creates work! But this gets regulation-lovers worried. They reckon that if work isn’t controlled through government regulation, there’s got to be something wrong. Currently their focus is on the so-called ‘gig’ economy. Apparently, it’s a big ‘problem’ that needs a solution.  More...

We rushed into action late Saturday night when we discovered that a really scary tax Bill was listed for a vote in Parliament this week.

The new law is supposed to stop illegal phoenixing. (That’s when someone sends their business bankrupt then ‘rebirths’ it under another name. They leave victims with huge debts.) But this new law would instead empower the ATO to: More...

There seems to be a new way to spell ‘incompetent.’ It’s now spelt ‘HM Revenue and Customs.’ That’s the title of the UK tax authority.

The new spelling of ‘incompetent’ is justified given the way HMRC have grossly botched up the handling of self-employed tax in the UK since 2000. We’ve put together the story which we find quite gobsmacking. 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...