303,000 crimes in three years: Insurer scrambles at royal commission. "If we had our time again, we wouldn’t do that business," Mr Martin told the royal commission.
Mr Martin said Clearview had sold only about 25,000 policies from the calls. While door-to-door insurance sellers were a common sight in the 1980s and 1990s, changes to the law meant insurance companies cannot cold call potential customers. Instead insurers can contact potential customers only if they have received a product disclosure statement beforehand. Mr Martin was taken through the number of breaches by counsel assisting the royal commission Rowena Orr, QC, at Monday’s hearing.
Nine Lies: how the gas cartel clouted Australia with price rises. Lie number one “There is a gas market.
The gas market determines gas prices.” There is not a gas market. There is a gas cartel. Ergo the nosebleed price rises. The appalling truth about our 'world-class' super system. Big-nursing-home-industry-is-aggressively-minimising-tax-20180501-p4zcq9. Royal Commission: no easy fix for systemic corruption - Michael West. There has been great surprise at the revelations of bad behaviour by this country’s biggest financial institutions in recent days, though not everybody was shocked.
IKEA's flatpacked tax bill shows it's time to put screws on beancounters. Another year, another story about IKEA's massive Australian sales and minuscule tax.
The latest instalment reports IKEA selling $1.16 billion of flatpacks in the year to August 31. After the accounting Allen keys were put to work, IKEA reportedly paid the Australian Tax Office all of $289,000. There's nothing new about IKEA's apparently miserable profitability in Australia. I wrote about it six years ago, noting how its claimed cost of importing stuff was rising at a time when other retailers' costs were falling thanks to a stronger Australian dollar.
Health insurance spirals but you won’t know it from BUPA’s accounts. Health insurance is yet another sector subsidised by taxpayers but statutory disclosure remains poor, particularly when it comes to the new industry leader, Bupa.
Breaking Bad: the tax antics of drug giant Abbvie. * Australians are paying four-times too much for drugs * Big Pharma is subsidised by taxpayers on the way in to Australia via the $10 billion Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). * On the way out, Big Pharma helps itself to further taxpayer subsidy by “transfer pricing”, shifting profits offshore.
Kicking off a ten-company investigation into the local offshoots of Big Pharma in Australia, we start with Abbvie. Exposed: how Johnson & Johnson cut its risk in vaginal mesh lawsuit. * The world’s biggest healthcare group has quietly cut its exposure to victims in its vaginal mesh class-action lawsuit. * Seven Johnson and Johnson subsidiaries are in breach of the Corporations Act. * With no explanation, J&J and its auditor PwC reduced accounting disclosures and transparency.
The 700 women suing Johnson and Johnson for faulty vaginal mesh implants will not be pleased to hear that the healthcare giant has quietly reduced its exposure to medical negligence lawsuits. Brisbane shelf-stacker secures key win against might of Coles, SDA. A Brisbane night-fill worker has won an important legal battle in a massive underpayment case against the combined might of Coles and one of the largest trade unions in Australia.
Coles worker Penny Vickers, who was representing herself, won the right for a full bench hearing in the Fair Work Commission against the arguments of high-powered lawyers from the company and the Shop, Distributive & Allied Employees (SDA). Her case is the latest attempt to unwind controversial deals struck by the politically influential SDA with major companies which have left workers out of pocket. A 12-month Fairfax Media investigation revealed how deals involving big business and the conservative SDA left more than 250,000 workers paid less than the award - the wages safety net - and is estimated to have saved those employers at least $300 million a year. In a landmark decision, the full bench of the Fair Work Commission found that the 2014 agreement failed the "better off overall test".
Phoney energy crisis merely a ploy to access off-limits gas. Turns out manufacturing is alive and well in Australia.
Only these days we're manufacturing crises. This week's exhibit is from the gas industry, which having witnessed the energy market regulator's grave warnings that we'd all be having cold showers in the dark in a couple of years, found itself summoned to the Prime Minister's table. "It is not acceptable for Australia – shortly to become the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas – to not have enough gas for its own families and its own businesses," boomed Malcolm Turnbull ahead of the meeting. And he was right. What was far less clear was why this arrangement had been so perfectly acceptable for so long. This is a modal window. Caption Settings Dialog Beginning of dialog window.
Thousands of workers find out they're being ripped off. One in four Australian workers who checked their pay through a union-run online wage calculator found out they were being ripped off, with staff in the restaurant business the worst affected.
Based on nearly 20,000 workers' pay details entered into the Fair Pay Campaign Calculator over three weeks, more than half of all restaurant industry submissions (60 per cent) showed staff were being denied minimum rates of pay. This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button. Captions Settings Dialog Beginning of dialog window.
The big banks have paid out $200 million in compensation. We now have a pricetag for the recent spate of "bank bastardry" – as government MP Warren Entsch has colourfully characterised a mounting litany of poor behaviour. Investigative Journalism. Manildra gave inflated jobs figures to minister before ethanol bill. Innovation and Better Regulation Minister Victor Dominello said he had sought to correct the parliamentary record.
Photo: Orlando Chiodo Ethanol producer Manildra gave vastly inflated figures to the NSW government about the number of people employed in the industry before legislation forcing small petrol retailers to sell the biofuel. According to better regulation minister Victor Dominello, Manildra told a staff member the industry supported 3000 direct jobs and 20,000 indirect jobs – figures quoted by Mr Dominello in his speech introducing the bill to the NSW Parliament. But Mr Dominello has been forced to correct the record after discovering the true numbers were 218 direct jobs and 2668 indirect jobs. Fairfax Media has previously revealed Manildra secured 20 meetings with NSW ministers and donated more than $160,000 to the Coalition in a ferocious lobbying effort before the introduction of new laws.
A Manildra spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. How 76 profitable companies left Australian taxpayers $5.6 billion out of pocket. Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Australia's tax mix 'all wrong', says economist Standard Life Investments chief economist Jeremy Lawson says the federal government will need to make unpopular decisions when it comes to tax policy. The biggest multinational companies operating in Australia are paying half the 30 per cent corporate tax rate on average, according to a new report delivered just weeks out from a budget expected to target multinational tax dodging. A review of two year's worth of financial data lodged by multinationals including Google, Yahoo! Twitter another closed book on earnings. The latest advertising figures from SMI Standard Media Index show social networking sites attracted $US46.5 million ($50 million) in ads from media buyers this year.
Photo: Reuters Micro-blogging site Twitter has emerged as another US tech giant that has sought immunity from corporate rules in Australia that require companies to disclose their earnings. The directors of Twitter Australia Holdings 12 months ago applied for an exemption from parts of the Corporations Act, according to documents registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
This meant it did not prepare a financial report or directors' report for the last calendar year, amid continued concern over profit-shifting by international companies. ACCC hatches fresh case tackling industry collusion. The country's top competition regulator is increasing its focus on cartel activity as part of a sweeping crackdown on companies that engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is forming new dedicated teams to tackle what he says is a disturbing amount of collusion among major companies and their competitors. ''We are seeing an uncomfortable level of cartel activity in Australia,'' he said. ''It has a profound effect on the prices consumers pay for their goods, and it completely undermines the way a market economy is supposed to work. ''We think it's something we need to put more effort in because clearly the deterrence message is not getting through.'' Advertisement The warning comes as the regulator filed its latest claims of cartel activity against major industry body the Australian Egg Corporation Limited (AECL) in the Federal Court.
Big business 'shirks' fair share of tax load. Corporate Tax Avoidance. Shell pumped $20 billion a year from motorists but paid no company tax. In the two years before it was sold to Viva, Shell reported revenues of $21.7 million and almost $22 billion, yet paid no income tax. Photo: Reuters For the third year on the trot, Shell service stations generated billions of dollars and revenue but not a cent in company tax.
Revealed: How 7 Eleven is ripping off its workers. Disability insurance claims often more stressful than original injury. Rupert Murdoch's US empire siphons $4.5b from Australian business virtually tax-free. According to an UNSW academic, Rupert Murdoch's Australian companies have paid income tax equivalent to only 10 per cent of their operating profits. Apple's $85 million tax bill is a fraction of its almost $8 billion revenue. Apple paid $85 million in Australian income tax last year, despite making almost $8 billion in local revenue, accounts filed with the corporate regulator show. The Sydney Morning Herald (Date:01/26/2016 04:21) Read full article >>
Australia 'paradise' for white-collar criminals, says ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft. Ethics forgotten amid culture of greed and code of silence. American Express pays no tax on multibillion-dollar Australian operation for seven years. In four of the seven years, American Express received a tax refund rather than making a tax payment.