The Commissioner of Taxation, Michael D’Ascenzo, has foreshadowed that the Private Binding Rulings Register, an online database of all PBRs provided to taxpayers is to be withdrawn.
The Register was created in order to increase transparency in relation to decision making within the Australian Taxation Office. Once a taxpayer is issued a PBR, it is sanitised to remove all references to the taxpayer and placed on the PBR Register, so other taxpayers, tax agents, tax lawyers and accountants can review it on the Register. The Register is to be replaced with a shell of its former self, a Clayton’s Register, that will list the number of each PBR issued and give a description in a few words of what the PBR was about.
For example, a detailed ruling on the deductibility of repairs on a rental property running for several pages will now be just a few brief words of no use whatsoever to taxpayers and practitioners, i.e:
Private Binding Ruling No: XXXXX
Deductibility Repairs — Rental Property.
The Commissioner’s reasoning for withdrawing the Register is that some (probably a very small fraction) of the rulings his own staff have issued are incorrect and their presence on the Register is said to be a cause of embarrassment. Rather than fixing the root cause of this perceived problem, that is, ensuring his own staff issue correct rulings, he has decided to take the expedient step of just removing the Register altogether.
Removing the Register will create two major problems. Firstly, it will completely remove transparency in the PBR process and increase the risk that rogue ATO Officers will release dodgy rulings. The number of incorrect rulings will only increase if ATO Officers know that their potential mistakes are no longer going to be on show for the public to see. Secondly, it will significantly increase the already significant cost of compliance with tax laws for many taxpayers, as the removal of an important research tool for the tax community will increase the time (and therefore cost) that tax lawyers and accountants spend researching issues that affect their clients.
These increased costs, of course, will be met by the humble taxpayer in the form of increased tax adviser fees.
Sometime around 1990, the then Tax Commissioner, Mr. Trevor Boucher introduced a system of KPIs which provided great incentive for ATO officers to take a hard line in collecting taxes. In the subsequent downturn, the ATO inflicted huge damage on many taxpayers and businesses (including the writer), with officers clearly pursuing their own interests. The then Tax Advisor to the Ombudsman, Mr. Peter Haggstrom was clearly outraged and began an ‘own motion’ investigation of hundreds of cases where ATO excess was apparent. Unfortunately, he left shortly thereafter (one has to wonder whether this was connected to his initiative) and his report was never published. A bland one-line reference to his actions appeared in the Tax Commissioners annual report, on the lines of “his comments were noted and the ATO will try and do better.” Looking at the events in the current story and the pursuance of high-profile characters such as Paul Hogan (whatever the merits of his case) one has to wonder whether the same old “my benefit at all costs and to hell with taxpayer interests” culture in the ATO is still in evidence ? Could Crikey use its famous capacity for investigative journalism to establish just what are the current PKIs for ATOofficers.