Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
$2,000 Shipping: International Sellers Charge Absurd Prices to Avoid Dealing With American Tariffs
404 Media; [no paywall] “Some international sellers on large platforms like eBay and Etsy have jacked up their shipping costs to the United States to absurd prices in order to deter Americans from buying their products in an effort to avoid dealing with the logistical headaches of Trump’s tariffs.
A Japanese eBay seller increased the shipping cost on a $319 Olympus camera lens to $2,000 for U.S. buyers, for example. The shipping price from Japan to the United Kingdom, Italy, Ireland, Costa Rica, Canada, and other countries I checked is $29, meanwhile.
The seller, Ninjacamera.Japan, recently updated their shipping prices to the United States to all be $2,000 for dozens of products that don’t weigh very much and whose prices are mostly less than $800.
That price used to be the threshold for the de minimis tariff exemption, a rule that previously allowed people to buy things without paying tariffs on lower-priced goods. As many hobbyists have recently discovered, the end of de minimis has made things more expensive and harder to come by…”
Jan Marsalek, a former executive at the German firm Wirecard, is believed to be working for Putin’s FSB spy agency and travelled with a Russian unit to Ukraine last year
Marsalek, who is said to be living under the name Alexander Nelidov, was named by the Old Bailey in December as the ringleader of a network of six Kremlin agents from Bulgaria who were convicted of spying. They were sentenced in May to between five and ten years in jail over what a judge said was “espionage on an industrial scale.”
An interview with Rebecca Solnit. “It feels like part of this horrible new culture where you can have any truth you want — as if history began and ended yesterday. Everything’s infinitely revisable, and there’s no accountability.”
Aussie bossesare being warned over a new“hidden” workplace trendthat could have expensive consequences if it’s not addressed.“Quiet cracking”is the new buzzword that is being used to describeemployeeswho are feeling disengaged and unhappy at work but are unable to leave.
Unlike “quiet quitting”, it’s not necessarily a deliberate withdrawal on the worker’s part and might not show up in performance metrics immediately. It’s often a precursor to burnout, with employees often fronting up to work feeling exhausted, frustrated and unmotivated.
America’s most powerful business groups representing technology giants, Wall Street banks and manufacturers have asked the Trump administration to press Australia to back down on tax laws that force the public disclosure of financial information they say should be kept private.
Ahead of Anthony Albanese’s expected meeting with President Donald Trump next week in New York, a coalition of nine business groups has written to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to complain that the corporate transparency laws are putting American multinationals at a competitive disadvantage.
“We, the undersigned trade associations, representing a broad range of sectors across the US economy, wish to express our appreciation for President Trump’s steadfast commitment to eliminating tariff and non-tariff trade barriers that impede the global competitiveness of US companies,” the business groups said in the letter dated September 12.
“It is in this context that we write to express our serious concerns regarding Australia’s recently enacted Public Country-by-Country Reporting (PCBCR) regime.”
Separately, American Chamber of Commerce in Australia chief executive April Palmerlee said, “We have rarely experienced such strong feedback through our tax committee and our members that something needed to be done due to the significant impact this could have in terms of releasing commercially sensitive and confidential information to the public, in a context where this information is already provided on a confidential basis to the Australian Tax Office.”
The tax disclosure regime is one of several gripes US business has raised with the Trump administration about Australia.
Other issues previously raised include a crackdown on US tech platforms, including the social media ban for people aged under 16, and a plan to impose financial penalties on digital platforms such as Meta that fail to strike deals with local news publishers, the administration of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and biosecurity restrictions on American beef, which Australia announced in July would be lifted.
The corporate tax transparency regime enacted by Labor late last year mandates the public disclosure of tax and revenue information for multinationals operating in Australia, including US companies.
“US companies with operations in Australia are deeply concerned that the new PCBCR rules will place them at a significant competitive disadvantage as it will force them to publicly disclose commercially sensitive business information, including number of employees, assets, revenues, profits and taxes paid globally,” the business groups said.
“Requiring disclosure of such granular business and financial data could enable competitors to reverse engineer critical business information, including pricing strategies, profit margins, and regional business strategies and performance, thereby undermining commercial confidentiality and long-term competitiveness of these US companies.”
The groups said the Australian Taxation Office already had access to the information privately through confidential country-by-country reporting mechanisms.
“In the spirit of fostering fairness.”
They requested Bessent raise the issue with the Australian government.
“Given these concerns, and in the spirit of fostering fairness to allow US companies to thrive and compete globally, we respectfully urge you to engage with Australian authorities to address that country’s infringement on US companies,” the letter said.
“Again, we are grateful for the Trump Administration’s commitment to a level playing field which allows US companies to compete within a fair international environment and appreciate your consideration of this issue.”
Groups signing the letter were the Investment Company Institute, American Chamber of Commerce in Australia, Information Technology Industry Council, Managed Funds Association, National Association of Manufacturers, National Foreign Trade Council, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Asset Management Group, US Chamber of Commerce and United States Council for International Business.
Jason Ward, principal analyst for the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability & Research and a spokesman for the Tax Justice Network Australia, rejected the push from the US business groups.
“It is unfortunate that the these US corporate lobby groups, representing the world’s largest tax dodgers, are making a last-ditch effort to get the Trump administration to oppose Australia’s world-class multinational tax transparency legislation,” he said.
It is clear that most large US multinationals would prefer to keep the scale and location of massive profit shifting out of the public eye.
— Jason Ward, Tax Justice Network Australia
“Throughout the extensive period of consultation and debate there has not been any credible evidence put forward to substantiate claims that greater tax transparency will harm the competitiveness of US or any other multinational corporations.
“It is clear that most large US multinationals would prefer to keep the scale and location of massive profit shifting out of the public eye.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the issue was one of fairness.
“We want to make sure that multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax. We have a broad and ambitious agenda in that regard,” he said.
“From time to time in the countries, not just that one, raise issues with us about our multinational tax regime and we work through those issues in the same considered, methodical, consultative way that we approach a number of these difficult issues in the budget and the economy more broadly.”
The Australia Institute’s chief economist, Greg Jericho, said he was concerned at any attempt to link the tax issue with tariffs.
“This appears an attempt to suggest President Trump should implement more tariffs against Australian companies due to these regulations,” he said.
John Kehoe is economics editor at Parliament House, Canberra. He writes on economics, politics and business. John was Washington correspondent covering Donald Trump’s first election. He joined the Financial Review in 2008 from Treasury. Connect with John on Twitter. Email John at jkehoe@afr.com
Is this dumber than the Pengu ETF? Or the leveraged single-stock Strategy ETF? The possible arrival of a Trumpcoin ETF later this year? It really is in the eyes of the beholder. But we’re getting pretty close to gouging ours out.
Cryptocurrencies UK set to announce closer co-operation with US on cryptocurrencies Chancellor Rachel Reeves hopes greater regulatory alignment will allow better access to America’s deep capital markets
Sometimes there’s little Alphaville could write that could possibly improve on the unintentional comedy of a regulatory statement. Today is one of those days. Say hello to the Tuttle Capital Bonk Income Blast ETF.
Principal Investment Strategies
“The Fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) that seeks to provide exposure to Bonk (“Bonk” or the “Reference Asset”) while also generating income through a structured options overlay of Bonk. The Fund, under normal market conditions, will use equity positions, call options, and synthetic positions to gain long exposure to the Reference Asset equal to at least 80% of its net assets (plus the amount of borrowings, if any, for investment purposes), and will implement a systematic put spread strategy to generate income. The Fund seeks to achieve economic exposure approximating 100% of the upside performance (before fees and expenses) of the daily performance of Bonk.
Yes, this is an SEC filing for an ETF that will invest in Bonk, the “social layer and community meme coin of Solana with deep integrations as a utility token across a wide base of application and protocols within the web3 ecosystem”.
Wait what, there’s more?
“In addition, the Fund may obtain exposure with exchange-traded call options on Bonk, including deep in-the-money call options . . . Finally, the Fund may obtain exposure to Bonk through synthetic long positions constructed using long call and short put options on Bonk with the same strike price and expiration date. To achieve a synthetic long exposure to Bonk, the Fund will buy Bonk call options and, simultaneously, sell Bonk put options to try to replicate the price movements of Bonk. The call options purchased by the Fund and the put options sold by the Fund will generally have one-month to one-year terms and strike prices that are approximately equal to the then-current share price of Bonk at the time the contracts are purchased and sold, respectively. The combination of the long call options and sold put options provides the Fund with investment exposure equal to approximately 100% of Bonk for the duration of the applicable options exposure. By using this Bonk, the Fund may achieve similar investment outcomes with potentially greater capital efficiency. However, synthetic long positions are subject to the risks associated with both call and put options, including the potential for significant losses if the price of Bonk declines.”
Incredibly, this is not actually the first filing for a Bonk ETF. That “honour” belongs to the Rex Shares-Osprey Funds duo, which registered a REX-Osprey Bonk ETF back in January, alongside filings for Solana, Dogecoin and Trumpcoin ETFs. The Tuttle Capital Bonk Income Blast ETF is the same idea, but after a heavy night of huffing glue. It hopes that by buying Bonk calls and simultaneously going short through Bonk put options it will generate the full Bonk “upside” as simply buying Bonk, but “with potentially greater capital efficiency” by generating Bonk-derived income. (Definitely a sentence that would kill a Victorian child.)
“The Fund seeks to generate income for shareholders by employing a put credit spread strategy on Bonk. Under this strategy, the Fund will sell put options that are near-the-money (i.e., with strike prices close to the current market price of the underlying security) to collect premiums and generate income, while simultaneously purchasing out-of-the-money put options (i.e., with lower strike prices further below the current market price) to hedge against significant downside risk.
This results in a net credit to the Fund at initiation, with the maximum profit realized if the underlying security’s price remains above the higher strike price at expiration, allowing both options to expire worthless. The Fund’s Adviser will select options based on factors such as implied volatility, time to expiration, and overall market conditions, aiming to balance income generation with risk management, though there is no assurance that the strategy will achieve its objectives or avoid losses. The Fund intends to implement and roll these spreads on a recurring basis. Net premiums received are intended to support the Fund’s income generation objectives.”
Those leaving the firm, now called Tenet Advisory & Investments, include senior partner James Collins, Caitrin Dunn and Shaun Bauer, along with newer partners William Broughton and Mat Norton. Collins has retired; the others could not be reached for comment.
Labor will be tempted to try to close down tax breaks and perceived loopholes, such as the capital gains tax discount, in the name of intergenerational fairness.
John Kehoe Economics editor Sep 17, 2025
Emerging out of Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ economic roundtable was a loose consensus among the chosen participants that the intergenerational bargain is breaking down, partly due to the tax system.
Governments need to ensure that too much pressure is not imposed on the income tax paid by working-age people, as Treasury projections warn will happen in the decades ahead, unless elevated government spending is cut or revenue is raised from other tax bases.
Various participants suggested reducing tax concessions for wealthy and high-income people for capital gains, negative gearing, superannuation and trusts.
Ultimately, the objective must be to have a better tax system that incentivises and rewards work, encourages investment, ensures equity between generations and promotes horizontal equity, a principle that people in the same economic situation should pay the same amount of tax and receive the same benefits.
The tax system should also be made simpler for taxpayers to comply with and for tax authorities to administer.
The temptation for the Labor government will be to try to close down tax breaks and perceived loopholes, such as the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount and for family trusts, in the name of intergenerational fairness.
But if the government is truly serious about reforming the taxation of personal savings and investment, there is a better way.
A consequence of the progressive income tax scale with a punitive top rate of 47 per cent (including the 2 per cent Medicare levy) kicking in at a relatively modest by international standards $190,000, is that it encourages tax planning by people who are savvy enough to receive structuring advice from accountants and lawyers.
This practice is sometimes referred to by tax experts as the three S’s: splitting income (with lower-taxed family members); shifting the timing of income (such as deferred capital gains by delaying the sale of assets); and structuring income (via trusts and companies).
Ideally, Australia would have a flatter income tax scale to make this rational and legal behaviour by taxpayers less appealing. That would require cutting the top personal rate to 40 per cent or less, as former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has suggested.
Another option is the dual income tax system. Several former Treasury tax experts agree that Australia should adopt a dual income tax system like the Nordic countries.
In this system, labour income derived from wages and salaries would continue to be taxed at progressive marginal rates. While non-labour income, including property rental income, capital gains, interest, company dividends and distributions from trusts, would be taxed at a flat rate throughout people’s lives.
Investment losses, such as from rental property known as negative gearing, would no longer be offset against labour income in a dual income tax system. AFR
A flat rate is simple to administer, reduces the scope for tax avoidance and reduces the incentive for high-income investors to seek tax-advantaged investments.
People would be more likely to make investments based on their economic returns, rather than the preferential tax treatment they can engineer. Capital should flow to the highest risk-adjusted returns and not be dictated by tax.
Investment losses, such as from rental property known as negative gearing, would no longer be offset against labour income. Instead, investment losses would only be offset against investment income and could be carried forwards against future investment income.
Opinions differ on the appropriate tax rate, but somewhere between 20 per cent and 25 per cent appears to be a reasonable starting point for discussion.
At face value, this tax rate may seem low for high earners. But there would be no tax-free threshold for investment income. The tax-free threshold would be preserved for labour income only.
Moreover, there is a sound case to tax capital more lightly than labour income. Capital used to invest has already been taxed as labour income. Double taxation distorts the incentive to consume now, versus saving for future investment. Investment and risk-taking, especially by entrepreneurs, need to be incentivised.
Capital income compounds over time, so high taxes on it can be economically harmful. Hence, most countries tax capital more lightly. New Zealand does not have a capital gains tax (which is overly generous), while the US has a top capital gains tax rate range of 15-20 per cent on long-term assets.
“Any changes to the taxation of savings and investments should not just be a revenue grab. A better and more consistent treatment of both would be real tax reform.”
In Australia, the existing 50 per cent discount for capital gains is not as generous as it sounds. Currently, it amounts to a maximum 23.5 per cent tax rate for capital gains for high earners for the disposal of assets such as shares and property held longer than 12 months.
But that is the headline tax rate on nominal gains, including inflation. Before the 50 per cent discount was introduced by the Howard government in 1999, only the real capital gains were taxed, which avoided taxing inflation.
Today, an asset held for about eight years faces a real effective tax rate on capital gains of about 35 per cent after allowing for inflation. The longer an asset is held, the less generous the discount is due to inflation eroding the real gains.
The real issue is not so much the discounted tax rate, but rather the ability for taxpayers to smooth their income and tax payments over their lifetimes through the three S’s.
For example, a wage and salary earner in their high-earning years can maximise the tax deductions at up to 47 per cent for mortgage interest deductions on investment properties. In retirement, they can sell the investment property and pay less tax on it when their other earnings are much lower.
Applying a flat tax rate on all personal investments and quarantining any losses against investment income would remove this distortion. It would also introduce greater neutrality between the taxation of different forms of savings and investment.
Today, people with savings in the bank are taxed at marginal rates, eroding the value of their savings. Other forms of savings and investment, such as superannuation and trust distributions streamed to low-taxed family members, are typically taxed more lightly.
Any changes to the taxation of savings and investments should not just be a revenue grab. A better and more consistent treatment of various savings and investments would be real tax reform.
John Kehoe is economics editor at Parliament House, Canberra. He writes on economics, politics and business. John was Washington correspondent covering Donald Trump’s first election. He joined the Financial Review in 2008 from Treasury. Connect with John on Twitter. Email John at jkehoe@afr.com
Here’s a short video by Arthur Brooks(that you are probably watching on your phone) about why you should log off, put your phone down, and let yourself be bored.
You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored. I mean, it couldn’t be clearer.
In 2021 I planted a tree a minute, for 24 hours, on my mates farm. It was freakin hard work, but also one of the coolest, most rewarding days I’ve ever had. I made a film about the project and promised folks I’d return every two years to show off the plot and see how the trees and bushes are going. This was a special day because I really felt like the project had landed. I had a cup of tea in the new forest, from water boiled on a fire made from the forest itself. It’s perhaps the most profound cup of tea I’ve ever had.
Confession: I spent half of this video concerned that Miles had actually cut down one of the trees to build his tea-making fire, but I needn’t have worried: he used the old planting stakes and trees that didn’t grow.
Miles recently made another video about planting trees and the number of views that video got in a month would dictate how many trees he would plant for the next bit of forest.
33 million voters have been run through a Trump administration citizenship check
NPR: “Tens of millions of voters have had their citizenship status and other information checked using a revamped tool offered by the Trump administration, even as many states — led by both Democrats and Republicans — are refusing or hesitating to use it because of outstanding questions about the system.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) says election officials have used the tool to check the information of more than 33 million voters — a striking portion of the American public, considering little information has been made public about the tool’s accuracy or data security.
The latest update to the system, known as SAVE, took effect Aug. 15 and allows election officials to use just the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers — along with names and dates of birth — to check if the voters are U.S. citizens, or if they have died.”
