Thursday, August 05, 2021

Tax justice should meet the tax gap in 2021: Microcourses

Bob JohnsonA South Australian man is due to front court after he was accused of defrauding the government $38.5m over 15 years by avoiding paying income tax. 

The defendant, 71, allegedly failed to disclose overseas trust assets in his income tax returns between 1999 and 2013.

Man’s alleged 15 year taxation fraud costs commonwealth more than $38.5 million


 Australian Government Begins Army Patrols to Keep Citizens in Lockdown Until Next Year.


China mocks Australia's draconian restrictions after Sydney used police helicopters and the army to enforce its 'Zero Covid' lockdown with just 17% of adults vaccinated


 Tax justice should meet the tax gap in 2021


The tax justice movement has come a long way in the eighteen years or so it has been going, but there is still a long way to go. This, the third in a series of videos, discusses one of the issues that the tax justice movement now really needs to embrace and understand, which is the nature of the tax gap.

The tax gap is the difference between that tax that might be paid on a tax base and the actual amount paid, taking into consideration no less than five reasons why tax paid might not, for both officially sanctioned (but maybe inappropriate) as well as varying illicit reasons, be less than anticipated. Understand the tax gap, I suggest, and you know a great deal of what needs to be achieved to deliver tax justice.

So why is tax justice ignoring it?

For more on the tax gap read this.



Business journalist and commentator Janine Perrett tweeted: 'Poor form. Berejiklian is asked a very valid question as to why so many Bunnings are turning up on exposure sites and still open to public and she simply refuses to answer.'

The moment Gladys Berejiklian refuses to answer questions about WHY Bunnings is still open during lockdown - as debate erupts over whether the hardware superstore is 'essential'


Here’s how police can get your data — even if you aren’t suspected of a crime


Revealed: the secret trauma that inspired German literary giant

The Public Accounts Committee is right: government accounting is CRAP (a Completely Rubbish APproximation to the truth)

I posted this thread (with a few bits shortened for Twitter) on my Twitter account this morning: According to press reports this morning ‘Britain faces
Read the full article…


Faceless people make compliant subjects, not good citizens.

In its worldwide impact, the COVID-19 pandemic has been the worst in a century.


 

Doodle – State of Meetings 2021 – April 2021 – An analysis of meetings and how they changed – “Meetings have long been a major aspect of the business world. From board meetings to sales pitches, that in-person interaction has kept our economic cogs turning. As the global economy has continued that journey forward, the reliance on meetings has increased. In fact, according to research conducted by the Harvard Business Review, meeting times have increased from around ten hours a week in the 1960s to nearly 23 hours by 2020. All this extra time meeting can have a strain on many aspects of our lives – both at work and at home. It’s not just the time eaten up by meetings that could be used doing other important tasks. More meetings often result in people having to work beyond the end of the business day and at weekends. This is why more and more research is showing that people are getting increasingly frustrated by unproductive and unnecessary meetings…”


What are the issues I need to be writing about?

It’s summer. The economy is collapsing. Covid is still rampant. The climate crisis is developing rapidly. Democracy is in peril, but what the heck? It’s
Read the full article…


Fortune: “Offices are opening back up and employers are nudging their workers to return into offices. This is the case for Hannah, a designer who has spent the last year working from a small island in Spain and is now being asked to return to London to spend time in her Mayfair office. “If they asked me to go back full time right now, I guess would try it, but based on the two days I spent in the office last week, I honestly don’t think I could. I was knackered and I did significantly less work,” she said. From Beijing to Boston, employers face a big fight on their hands in trying to get staff back into the office Monday to Friday. In what’s turning into the biggest workplace dilemma in well over a generation, employees are increasingly prepared to walk away from a job if management insists on a mandatory return to the workplace when offices fully reopen in the coming weeks and months. According to a survey of 2,700 office workers across nine countries carried out by the polling firm Ipsos, more than a third of all office workers would quit if they were forced to go back into the office full time. The study interviewed workers from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, China and Australia…”


…compartmentalizing is a fantastic tool when you’re an athlete, just blocking everything out that isn’t in line with one goal. But it’s terrible for other aspects of your life; it’s terrible for relationships.


38% of Remote Workers Work From BedAxios


Congress fails to extend federal eviction moratorium – which ends after July 31 – before going on recess Business Insider


With moratorium lifting, can US avoid avalanche of evictions? Christian Science Monitor


UK faces insecure job ‘crisis’ as government plans to pull pandemic safety net awayopenDemocracy


MONEY FEVER, LOSS OF TASTE, MORE SMELL — WHO EARNED SUPER PROFITS IN RUSSIA FROM THE CORONA VIRUS?John Helmer. Funny that we haven’t seen anything remotely this granular for the US.


Canberrans are burning through firewood this winter and suppliers can’t keep up with demandABC Australia


Kenyan entrepreneur turns water hyacinth weed into cooking fuel Reuters


We are starting to look at the last season of Fargo in a different light:

Email Appears to Show CNN’s Chris Cuomo Drafted Sexual Harassment Statement for His Brother


Public service or politics?

Senior public servants are only as good as the leadership provided by politicians working in the national interest. With appropriate checks, balances and protections in place, senior public servants should be able to give the frank and fearless advice required of their position and as set out in law....