Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Fair Go: Dick Smith Manifesto


15 August 2017





Inequality and the broken economy demonstrated in one graph


UPDATE (please see below for a UK graph) If you ever believed that the inequality levels we’re seeing today in most so-called developed economies are inevitable, not so very remarkable, and not as extreme as some might have us believe, economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have produced a graph that demonstrates the […] The post Inequality and the broken economy demonstrated in one graph appeared first on Tax Justice Network.

Three decades after the somewhat chilling Grim Reaper AIDS ads first aired, businessman Dick Smith is set to launch a new version of the ad, but with a slightly different message.

Using the same voice-over from the 30-year-old ad, the impassioned TV spot will launch at a media conference with Smith at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney tomorrow morning. However, Smith says he's angry that he has to spend $1 million on an ad that should be going to charities like St Vincent de Paul and the Salvos, but instead “is being sent to wealthy TV station and newsprint owners”.

Entrepreneur Smith, who founded Dick Smith Electronics in 1968 before it was sold to Woolworths Ltd in 1982 - and was subsequently acquired by Kogan.com last year - believes because of the growing rift between the wealthy and the poor that we are changing the egalitarian country that we once knew.

“Endless growth will destroy Australia as we know it today,” Smith says.

“Aussie families can have up to 20 kids during their lifetime, but none do. They decide on a number they can give a good life to. But our major political parties have no similar plan for Australia.

“It is simply endless growth and endless greed – meaning the finite wealth has to be divided between more people, and that means less for most.”

The ad features snippets of Prime Minster Malcom Turnbull, opposition Leader Bill Shorten along with Julie Bishop, Kevin Rudd, Joe Hockey, Wayne Swan, Penny Wong, Alex Hawke, Mathias Cormann, Bruce Billson and Scott Morrison. 

He says Australia’s wealthiest 1% own more than the bottom 70% - which is 17 million Aussies.

Smith says eight out of 10 Australians he talks to want a proper population plan, but no major political party reflects this – adding they are “so obsessed” with pleasing the 1% who have all the money that the greed overruns all.
Dick Smith anti-immigration ad: Stop the Ponzi scheme or face revolt 

 'Angry' Dick Smith 'forced' to spend $1m on new Grim Reaper TV ad


Dick Smith revives 'Grim Reaper' ad in bid to curb immigration 


 dicksmithfairgo.com.au
MILLIONAIRE businessman Dick Smith has taken aim at his own generation, saying its greed has crippled young people’s ability to own their first home.

He launched a scathing attack on Australia’s politicians, accusing them of being too scared to make tax changes that would be unpopular with the generation already on the “homeownership gravy train”.

“These people may be aware that the system that has skewed the game so heavily in their favour is locking the next generation out,” he wrote in Dick Smith Fair Go released this week.


Dick Smith blames his generation for housing crisis


The Tents In Martin Place Are Just The Tip Of The Homelessness Iceberg


Jack de Groot

Without government legislation for affordable housing targets our cities will become playgrounds for the rich.

In the book he also takes aim at “turbocharged bank lending”; overseas investors; and tax benefits as causing an “almost impossible-to-fix” situation of housing affordability. Mr Smith pointed out that in just two generations, the price of a house had increased eightfold from 1.5 times the average annual income to 12 times the average annual income.

“A dramatically increasing population, a tax regime that unfairly subsidises the wealthy and overseas investors are the key drivers of the crisis,” the book, says.

The book can be downloaded for free at: dicksmithfairgo.com.au
Why Dick Smith says Aussie SMEs could be forced to pay 27% interest on business




'They'll become terrorists': Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith says




Millionaire entrepreneur Dick Smith predicts Australia will suffer from a spate of terrorist attacks if it continues taking in 200,000 migrants a year.



'Halal would have made OzEmite expensive': Dick Smith


Canada publishes mining transparency data
Canada has become the latest country to force mining and extractive industry companies to disclose payments made to governments. This is a particularly significant move as a significant number of the world’s mining companies are based in Canada.

The One Campaign has this post on the issue, highlighting how the data can be used to help people in natural resource rich countries follow the money and hold their governments to account.

For example, a company might declare that it has contributed an amount of money to forestry, but which projects got the money, how was it spent? Those are vital questions that would not be possible without the data being published.





Canada publishes mining transparency data


The UK government has stopped companies employing a scheme where it was paying directors in gold bullion to avoid taxes.

The attempted dodge, which sounds like a tax avoidance scheme from the 1970s, involved a highly convoluted series of trusts and trades designed to take advantage of loopholes in the law.

The scheme however was defeated by the UK’s General Anti Avoidance Rule (GAAR). That rule can reverse any tax advantage from a transaction if the purpose of that transaction was purely to create a tax benefit.

The GAAR is an interesting device, the guidance for the instrument states “[the GAAR] rejects the proposition that taxpayers have unlimited freedom to use their ingenuity to reduce their tax bills by any lawful means.” Which is of course a direct challenge to tax planners who have long claimed that their clients do have that freedom.

The GAAR has come in for some criticism in the UK, as in order for it to be activated it requires the opinion of an expert panel and many of the members of that panel are tax advisors in the private sector, who may well have been involved in dreaming up such schemes.

It has taken four years for the panel to consider its first case, and there is a suspicion that the outlandish gold bullion scheme may well have been referred to them by HMRC just to remind the world that they exist at all.

Pfizer’s billion dollar tax doping


Pfizer, the big-pharma multinational has been accused of using the Netherlands to engage in a billion dollar tax dodge.

Leading Australian investigative journalist Michael West has detailed a series of paper transactions which he claims created a billion dollar tax loss, which the company then used to write off their tax bill in Australia.
Pfizer’s tax advisors were KPMG and according to West, this is not the first time the two have been caught cooking up tax schemes in Australia.
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