ATO SES high-flyers collect another year of $60,000+ bonuses
ATO second commissioners have banked big “at-risk” bonuses while the agency faces a gaping revenue gap.
Julian Bajkowski
NOV 13, 2025
ATO second commissioner David Allen. (Image: Accountant Daily)
Three of the Australian Taxation Office’s second commissioners have again collected hefty performance bonus payments of more than $60,000 each, despite a yawning revenue collection gap and wholesale collapse in tobacco excise.
Revealed in the ATO’s latest annual report, the persistently controversial bonuses are awarded only to second commissioners at the ATO and are cemented in place by way of conditions and entitlements set by the Remuneration Tribunal.
Second commissioners of the ATO, David Allen, Kirsten Fish, and Jeremy Hirschhorn, are all recorded as collecting five-figure performance bonuses for the 2024-2025 financial year.
Second commissioners of the ATO, David Allen, Kirsten Fish, and Jeremy Hirschhorn, are all recorded as collecting five-figure performance bonuses for the 2024-2025 financial year.
Allen scored a $64,290 bonus while Fish and Hirschhorn both collected $68,166 each in bonus payments.
Known as the “Principal Executive Office (PEO) Structure”, the bonus payments are essentially baked into second commissioner appointment contracts for the life of their seven-year terms, although the granting of the bonuses is understood to be formally approved by the commissioner of taxation, conditional on satisfactory executive performance.
What’s less publicly discussed is what’s required to achieve the meaty ‘at risk’ performance bonus or the definition of a “principal executive officer” as set out above, and who makes the PEO call.
Essentially, it’s a minister’s call to make a declaration that a position is a PEO as set out in the Remuneration Tribunal Act 1973, according to the most recent PEO guidelines that date back to 2020.
The designation of PEOs dates back to 1988, following reforms for government business enterprises. The positions are, almost entirely, the top executive positions at enterprises that range from the National Gallery of Australia to the Australia Strategic Policy Institute.
The exceptions to the ‘number one-boss’ convention are the ATO’s second commissioners and deputy governors of the Reserve Bank of Australia, both of which attract Tier 1 travel entitlements.
That said, no bonuses were paid to executives at the RBA according to its latest annual report.
It was a different story over at Australia Post, where “at-risk variable remuneration” was just under half (47.8%) of chief postie Paul Graham’s $3.3 million FY2025 payday.
The ATO pointed back to the Remuneration Tribunal regarding its bonus structure.
“As principal executive office holders (PEOs), ATO second commissioners are entitled to receive performance pay in accordance with the Remuneration Tribunal’s (Principal Executive Offices—Classification Structure and Terms and Conditions) Determination and the Remuneration Tribunal’s Guide to the PEO Structure,” an ATO spokesperson told The Mandarin.
“Performance pay for second commissioners is an ‘at-risk’ payment subject to the achievement of agreed performance outcomes, which are set annually and include:
- achievement of organisational and individual group strategic objectives and deliverables identified in the ATO corporate plan;
- consistent role modelling and championing of the ATO Leadership Strategy key attributes; and
- delivery of government programs and initiatives.”
What’s less clear is where the mindset of the treasurer and prime minister is on the retention of the distinctly neoliberal construct of performance bonuses and at-risk pay in the Australian Public Service.
On that front, the ATO is, quite firmly, not speculating.
*Rethinking Risk: the regulator’s perspective (and some musings on risk watermelons)
Primary Source of Epstein Emails: Oversight Committee Releases Additional Epstein Estate Documents
For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files
House passes bill to reopen government as new Epstein revelations roil US politics – live
More Articles Are Now Created by AI Than Humans
FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site
404 Media: “The FBI is attempting to unmask the owner behind archive.today, a popular archiving site that is also regularly used to bypass paywalls on the internet and to avoid sending traffic to the original publishers of web content, according to a subpoena posted by the website. The FBI subpoena says it is part of a criminal investigation, though it does not provide any details about what alleged crime is being investigated.
Think ICE Is Bad Now? Today the Border Patrol Is Taking It Over
How Gregory Bovino Proudly Became Trump’s #1 Immigration Stormtrooper – “A big part of this newsletter, amid the onrushing tide of news and never-ending flurry of scandal, is to mark when something major changes in our national fabric.
Last night, something did — and you probably haven’t even heard about it yet. In a sweeping purge that affected cities from Denver to Philadelphia, the ICE leadership across about half of the country was removed — making room to replace them with leaders from the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
“The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” a DHS official told NBC News, one of the few outlets to report on the purge as it happened last evening. “So CBP will do it.”
- NBC reported that the move was led by Corey Lewandowski, the mastermind behind much of DHS’s enforcement operations, and Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol executive who has been the literal face of much of the agency’s most aggressive (and illegal!) tactics.
- It’s an important recognition of a nuanced point: There are really two separate armed gangs rampaging on America’s streets — while ICE has been primarily leading the way on detentions across the country, ambushing people in places like the hallways outside immigration courts in New York City, it’s really been CBP’s Border Patrol that is terrorizing the residents of places of Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. (The two are now so blob-like that The Atlantic even used a photo of CBP officers to illustrate its article on how badly ICE’s hiring surge is going.) In the race to become America’s secret police and Trump’s goon-squad-of-choice, CBP’s military-style tactics on our streets appears to be winning — laws be damned…”
How Gregory Bovino Proudly Became Trump’s #1 Immigration Stormtrooper – “A big part of this newsletter, amid the onrushing tide of news and never-ending flurry of scandal, is to mark when something major changes in our national fabric. Last night, something did — and you probably haven’t even heard about it yet.
In a sweeping purge that affected cities from Denver to Philadelphia, the ICE leadership across about half of the country was removed — making room to replace them with leaders from the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). “The mentality is CBP does what they’re told, and the administration thinks ICE isn’t getting the job done,” a DHS official told NBC News, one of the few outlets to report on the purge as it happened last evening. “So CBP will do it.”
- NBC reported that the move was led by Corey Lewandowski, the mastermind behind much of DHS’s enforcement operations, and Greg Bovino, a Border Patrol executive who has been the literal face of much of the agency’s most aggressive (and illegal!) tactics.
- It’s an important recognition of a nuanced point: There are really two separate armed gangs rampaging on America’s streets — while ICE has been primarily leading the way on detentions across the country, ambushing people in places like the hallways outside immigration courts in New York City, it’s really been CBP’s Border Patrol that is terrorizing the residents of places of Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. (The two are now so blob-like that The Atlantic even used a photo of CBP officers to illustrate its article on how badly ICE’s hiring surge is going.) In the race to become America’s secret police and Trump’s goon-squad-of-choice, CBP’s military-style tactics on our streets appears to be winning — laws be damned…”
