Frank Yuan
Postdoctoral Fellow

While people are talking about revenue-raising at The Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit, the Australian Taxation Office has sidelined the person who uncovered PwC’s leaking of confidential government information.

Michael O’Neill, a long-time public servant in the ATO, led the investigation into consultancy giant PwC’s conduct, which found that a former partner there had leaked confidential government briefings with clients. 

So, an expert at the PwC was being contracted by the Commonwealth government to help design laws which would ensure multinational companies paid a fairer share of their taxes. The same expert then turned around to share the confidential knowledge from that work with his clients, so that they could design ways to get around paying the new tax.

This was uncovered by the investigation of the Tax Practitioners Board (a regulatory body) headed by Michael O’Neill.

Only yesterday the Tax Practitioners Board announced another investigation into the PwC. And now they are supposed to proceed without the highly experienced investigator who broke open the case.

Is Australia serious about getting companies to pay their fair share of taxes? Are we serious about corporate accountability?

At the very least, Australians deserve to know why Mr O’Neill has been moved on.