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Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Tax, Outsourcing and Digital Landscapes

News from the Profession. Flexible Schedules, Goodwill and Gossipy Bosses (Caleb Newquist, Going Concern).



TechnologyOne could lose $122m World (B)anker Brisbane city deal

AFP and Defence training contracts awarded to Evocca college

Lucrative training contracts for the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Defence have been awarded to a private college group that has been under investigation by the federal government.

The tenders, worth more than $200,000, have been awarded under several different company names, including Dimension Data Learning Services, to supply training for less than five months in software courses, electrical services and general training. 

Thousands of last-minute tax lodgers were caught in the crossfire of the cyber warfare and were unable to complete their forms. Those trying to get over the lodgement deadline were not amused and took to social media to make there views clear.



Forbes, The Tax Implications Of Super Bowl LI: Super Bowl Bet That's A Sure Thing:
It's also almost tax time, and we should all remember who gets a piece of every bet: the IRS. The IRS gets a piece, whether sports betting, rolling the dice, playing cards, or betting on the ponies. All gambling winnings are taxable income in the eyes of the IRS. And the IRS doesn't allow you to automatically reduce your winnings by your losses either. Here are 7 tips for casual gamblers.

Panama Papers: PANA inquiry meets Prof Mark Pieth and EU national MPs 

French industrialist Dassault fined two million euros for tax evasion

It's GE vs. Wal-Mart as Corporate Feud Breaks Out Over Tax

HPE SAN causes four-day outage at Australian Tax Office 

Service denied! The new cybercriminal attack that can take down the ...

INTHEBLACK-2 Feb. 2017

The ATO would ignore the incoming data – but a big enough torrent of traffic ... computers into massive “botnets” that all do the same thing at once, hackers ... The 40-hour outage – blamed on poor communication and DDoS ...


By Leon Spencer


ATO tech woes continue


Key ATO services went down yesterday, with the agency confirming that the problems are linked to a widespread outage in December.




The collapse of the storage network on December 12 - which downed the ATO's entire online presence and several internal systems for two days, and was followed by a second outage the following week - is being investigated by PwC as part of an independent review into what went wrong. The review will be finalised in March, and runs alongside the ATO's own internal investigation into the matter One Crises Leads to Another Crises



Useless anti-money laundering laws  







Trump’s voter fraud expert owes US more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes Guardian 

DFS FINES DEUTSCHE BANK $425 MILLION FOR RUSSIAN MIRROR-TRADING SCHEME  
Sam Brunson, Privacy Is Dead: Crowdsourcing Tax Enforcement (Surly Subgroup). “Requiring the public disclosure of tax returns has at least two beneficial results, from a tax compliance perspective.”




Who really owns Jilin Jiutai Rural and Commercial Bank?

Leslie Book, Taxpayer Rights: Measuring IRS Performance. “One of the common critiques of taxpayer rights provisions is that in some cases an agency that violates a taxpayer’s rights may not lead to the taxpayer enjoying a specific remedy… Yet the absence of a remedy does not mean that there are no other ways to encourage good agency practice.”



SIBOrly Mazur (SMU), Taxing Social Impact Bonds, 20 Fla. Tax Rev. ___ (2017):

An exciting new way to fund social services has recently emerged. This new financing mechanism, called a social impact bond (SIB), has the potential to help us tackle some of our nation’s most challenging social problems. Broadly speaking, a SIB is a type of “pay for success” contract where private investors provide the upfront capital to finance a social program, but only recoup their investment and realize returns if the program is successful. Like any new financing instrument, SIBs create numerous regulatory challenges that have not yet been addressed. One unresolved issue is the tax implications of a SIB investment. This Article argues that the current law allows for multiple possible characterizations of the SIB arrangement for tax purposes.
Via Wired: “Before Donald Trump was the president, he was a businessman. He came to office leading a vast business enterprise that includes real estate, casinos, and a lucrative branding operation. “The network is huge,” says designer Kim Albrecht, whose rivetingdata visualization Trump Connections attempts to untangle it all. Albrecht used data from BuzzFeed’s TrumpWorld investigation into the president’s 1,500-odd business connections to create two visualizations. The first places Trump at the center of an enormous web. The other, which resembles a family tree, deconstructs that network person by person, business by business. “It’s a complete mess if you look at the entire dataset,” Albrecht says.


Liberal doner scores big from Baird's amalgamation agenda

TechnologyOne has donated over $150,000 to Liberal Party branches ... 'Everyone has been asking who wins from these forced mergers and ...

The IT firm cashing in on Sydney's council mergers




How WeChat Founder’s Obsession With QR Codes Reshapes Chinese Internet WSJ. If QR codes become more or less universal, is there a business case for abolishing cash? Why not just let it do what it does?

NYU TaxSymposium, Tax and Entrepreneurship, 69 Tax L. Rev. 311-457 (2016):


The map that shows the most corrupt countries in the world  

The Pinstripe Mafia shows no repentence for its role: Apple tax ruling tantamount to 'land grab', says PwC boss  

Canada is the world's newest tax haven  

Panama suspends Panama Papers investigation

Tax havens, capital flows and secrecy (Skatteparadis, kapitalflukt og hemmelighold)


'Tax haven' Canada being used by offshore cheats, Panama Papers show


Shops and restaurants are going cash free and payment policies such as "$10 eftpos minimum" and "2 per cent credit card surcharge" are likely to disappear as consumer preferences change and lower interchange fees kick in on July 1. At Spice Alley in Chippendale, Sydney, all six Asian food vendors run a card-only economy. When you walk in, a sign declares: "Spice Alley is cashless. Tap and go cards accepted or get a reloadable kopi-tiam cash card at the pay station."
The rise of card-only shops

Families stripped of tax credits by Concentrix to have cases reviewed