More than naming and shaming needed to stop corporate tax avoidance

The report of the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into corporate tax avoidance comes with the subtitle – “You cannot tax what you cannot see”, with a strong focus on increased transparency. The majority of the 17 recommendations in the interim report relate to improved transparency of the tax affairs of corporate taxpayers. This is a significant step in the right direction. Recent experiences in the war on corporate tax avoidance both in Australia and overseas confirm that “information is power”. Most notably, we have seen increased transparency changing the behaviour of multinational enterprises as well as inducing governments to act.

Government cracks down on tax avoidance through foreign investment rules

The Turnbull Government announced yet another measure aimed at addressing tax base erosion and profit shifting, placing additional requirements on new foreign investment under the existing national interest test. In the last 12 months Australia has seen various reforms within the tax system. However, this latest initiative is a shift as it links Australia’s tax regime with its foreign investment regime. It sends a broader signal to the market that Australia will look beyond the collection of tax revenues to a consideration of national interest.

Tariff-tax reforms and market access

Reducing tariffs and increasing consumption taxes is a standard IMF advice to countries that want to open up their economy without hurting government finances. Indeed, theoretical analysis of such a tariff–tax reform shows an unambiguous increase in welfare and government revenues. The present paper examines whether the country that implements such a reform ends up opening up its markets to international trade, i.e. whether its market access improves. It is shown that this is not necessarily so. We also show that, comparing to the reform of only tariffs, the tariff–tax reform is a less efficient proposal to follow both as far as it concerns market access and welfare.

Surviving the Personal Property Securities Act (2009) Cth

Australia has new national legislation - the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) and the Personal Property Securities Regulations 2010 – which is expected to commence operating in February 2012. Previous personal property securities legislation was very complex, with more than seventy pieces of legislation in the states and territories, and more than forty registers. This reform package is the culmination of a process that began many years ago and various drafts have been the subject of much investigation and consultation. This legislation rationalises previous laws and bring about substantial changes to this area of law. This paper seeks to explain the principal changes and their implications.

In focus : the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth)

Australia has new national legislation - the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) and the Personal Property Securities Regulations 2010 – which commenced operation on 30 January 2012. Previous personal property securities legislation was very complex, with more than seventy pieces of legislation in the states and territories, and more than forty registers. This reform package is the culmination of a process that began many years ago and various drafts have been the subject of much investigation and consultation. This legislation rationalises previous laws and bring about substantial changes to this area of law. This paper seeks to explain the principal changes and their implications.

From policy borrowing to implementation : an illuminative evaluation of learning and teaching in higher education in Australia (2002 to 2008)

This study documents and theorises the consequences of the 2003 Australian Government Reform Package focussed on learning and teaching in Higher Education during the period 2002 to 2008. This is achieved through the perspective of program evaluation and the methodology of illuminative evaluation. The findings suggest that the three national initiatives of that time, Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF), Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), and Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), were successful in repositioning learning and teaching as a core activity in universities. However, there were unintended consequences brought about by international policy borrowing, when the short-lived nature of LTPF suggests a legacy of quality compliance rather than one of quality enrichment.

Agency problems of corporate philanthropy

Evaluating agency theory and optimal contracting theory views of corporate philanthropy, we find that as corporate giving increases, shareholders reduce their valuation of firm cash holdings. Dividend increases following the 2003 Tax Reform Act are associated with reduced corporate giving. Using a natural experiment, we find that corporate giving is positively (negatively) associated with CEO charity preferences (CEO shareholdings and corporate governance quality). Evidence from CEO-affiliated charity donations, market reactions to insider-affiliated donations, its relation to CEO compensation, and firm contributions to director-affiliated charities indicates that corporate donations advance CEO interests and suggests misuses of corporate resources that reduce firm value.

Illuminative evaluation as a method applied to Australian Government policy borrowing and implementation in higher education

Any government deciding to invoke widespread change in its higher education sector through implementation of new policies impacts on every institution and all staff and students, often in both the time taken up and the heightened emotions caused. The central phenomenon that this study addresses is the process and consequences of policy changes in higher education in Australia. The aim of this article is to record the research design through the perspective (evaluation research), theoretical framework (program evaluation) and methods (content analysis, descriptive statistical analysis and bibliometric analysis) applied to the investigation of the 2003 federal government higher education reform package. This approach allows both the intended and unintended consequences arising from the policy implementation of three national initiatives focused on learning and teaching in higher education in Australia to surface. As a result, this program evaluation, also known in some disciplines as policy implementation analysis, will demonstrate the applicability of illuminative evaluation as a methodology and reinforce how program evaluation will assist and advise future government reform and policy implementation, and will serve as a legacy for future evaluative research.Any government deciding to invoke widespread change in its higher education sector through implementation of new policies impacts on every institution and all staff and students, often in both the time taken up and the heightened emotions caused. The central phenomenon that this study addresses is the process and consequences of policy changes in higher education in Australia. The aim of this article is to record the research design through the perspective (evaluation research), theoretical framework (program evaluation) and methods (content analysis, descriptive statistical analysis and bibliometric analysis) applied to the investigation of the 2003 federal government higher education reform package. This approach allows both the intended and unintended consequences arising from the policy implementation of three national initiatives focused on learning and teaching in higher education in Australia to surface. As a result, this program evaluation, also known in some disciplines as policy implementation analysis, will demonstrate the applicability of illuminative evaluation as a methodology and reinforce how program evaluation will assist and advise future government reform and policy implementation, and will serve as a legacy for future evaluative research.

Submission to House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics Inquiry into Home Ownership

This paper empirically examines the effect of current tax policy on home ownership, specifically looking at how developer contributions impact house prices. Developer contributions are a commonly used mechanism for local governments to pay for new urban infrastructure. This research applies a hedonic house price model to 4,699 new and 25,053 existing house sales in Brisbane from 2005 to 2011. The findings of is research are consistent with international studies that support the proposition that developer contributions are over passed. This study has provided evidence that suggest developer contributions are over passed to both new and existing homes in the order of around 400%. These findings suggest that developer contributions are thus a significant contributor to increasing house prices, reduced housing supply and are thus an inefficient and inequitable tax. By testing this effect on both new and existing homes, this research provides evidence in support of the proposition that not only are developer contributions over passed to new home buyers but also to buyers of existing homes. Thus the price inflationary effect of these developer contributions are being felt by all home buyers across the community, resulting in increased mortgage repayments of close to $1,000 per month in Australia. This is the first study to empirically examine the impact of developer contributions on house prices in Australia. These results are important as they inform governments on the outcomes of current tax policy on home ownership, providing the first evidence of its kind in Australia. This is an important contribution to the tax reform agenda in Australia.

"Re-thinking" the influence of regulatory capture in the development of government regulation

On 30 March 2015 the Australian Federal Government launched its "Re-Think" initiative with the objective of achieving a better tax system which delivers taxes that are lower, simpler and fairer. The discussion paper released as part of the "Re:think" initiative is designed to start a national conversation on tax reform. However, inquiries into Australia's future tax system, subsequent reforms and the introduction of new taxes are nothing new. Unfortunately, recent history also demonstrates that reform initiatives arising from reviews of the Australian tax system are often deemed a failure. The most prominent of these failures in recent times is the Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT), which lasted a mere 16 months before its announced repeal. Using the established theoretic framework of regulatory capture to interpret publically observable data, the purpose of this article is to explain the failure of this arguably sound tax. It concludes that the MRRT legislation itself, through the capture by the mining companies, provided internal subsidization in the form of reduced tax and minimal or no rents. In doing so, it offers an opportunity to understand and learn from past experiences to ensure that recommendations coming out of the Re:think initiative do not suffer the same fate.

G20 host Australia faces hard truths of multinational profit shifting

The G20 Finance Ministers have the opportunity this weekend to endorse the initial recommendations of the OECD on how to address the global problem of multinational tax avoidance. The work of the OECD on the issue to date is substantial. Most notable is the adoption by many nations, including Australia, of the Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of tax information. This standard will allow significant inroads to be made into tax avoidance, particularly by individuals sheltering money offshore. This is the first step in an ambitious tax reform program. There is a long way to go if we are to end the issue now known as Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). This week’s release of the first of the OECD recommendations contains some positive signs that further advances will be made. It also recognises some hard truths.

Prescriptions for reform of Australia's superannuation tax concessions

The highly controversial and often politicised issue of Australia’s retirement savings regime featured prominently throughout the two day Federal Government’s October 2011 Tax Forum. Calls for reform of this regime are by no means new. Reform debate over the years has focused on each of the three separate pillars: the age pension, compulsory superannuation, and voluntary saving, as well as the interaction of those three elements. However, recently there has been a significant shift away from reliance on the age pension, with its associated risks falling to the government, to a defined contributions scheme where the associated risks fall to the individual taxpayer. Consequently, Australia’s superannuation regime is predominantly subject to current debate, and, as such, the subject of this article. This article considers the history of Australia’s retirement savings regime, along with a framework for evaluating the superannuation tax concessions. It then discusses the recommendations of the Australian Future Tax System (AFTS) Review Panel and ensuing debate at the Tax Forum. Finally, it suggests two proposals to achieve the objectives of the AFTS Review in relation to retirement, those objectives being a system which is broad and adequate, acceptable to individuals, robust, simple and approachable, and finally sustainable. The first, whilst potentially requiring some tinkering’, is relatively simple and a blue print has already been provided to the Federal Government – the adoption of Recommendations 18 and 19 of the AFTS Review. The second is one of management. Superannuation concessions are fundamentally categorised as tax expenditures and the management of these tax expenditures, not just the reporting, should be undertaken.

School Leadership, Literacy and Social Justice : The Place of Local School Curriculum Planning and Reform

School reform is a matter of both redistributive social justice and recognitive social justice. Following Fraser (Justice interruptus: critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. Routledge, New York, 1997), we begin from a philosophical and political commitment to the more equitable redistribution of knowledge, credentials, competence, and capacity to children of low socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic minority and Indigenous communities whose access, achievement, and participation historically have “lagged” behind system norms and benchmarks set by middle class and dominant culture communities. At the same time, we argue that the recognition of these students and their communities’ lifeworlds, knowledges, and experiences in the curriculum, in classroom teaching, and learning is both a means and an end: a means toward improved achievement measured conventionally and a goal for reform and alteration of mainstream curriculum knowledge and what is made to count in the school as valued cultural knowledge and practice. The work that we report here was based on an ongoing 4-year project where a team of university teacher educators/researchers have partnered with school leadership and staff to build relationships within community. The purpose has been to study whether and how engagement with new digital arts and multimodal literacies could have effects on students “conventional” print literacy achievement and, secondly, to study whether and how the overall performance of a school could be generated through a focus on professional conversations and partnerships in curriculum and instruction – rather than the top-down implementation of a predetermined pedagogical scheme, package, or approach.