Latest news with #FourCorners
ABC News
14 hours ago
- Business
- ABC News
ATO to review processes around decision to cancel ex-PM's company's $950k tax bill
The Australian Taxation Office has moved to allay fears powerful individuals are given special treatment, saying it will review how it made a decision to wipe almost $1 million in penalties and interest from a company owned by former prime minister Paul Keating. "We are following up to ensure all processes were correctly adhered to," the ATO said in a statement following Monday night's Four Corners program. Four Corners revealed an abrupt about face from the tax office in 2015, which followed three years of negotiations and came after a formal payment notice for $953,000 was issued to Mr Keating's company. The decision was unusual because, for most taxpayers, formally challenging such a ruling on a so-called general interest charge (GIC) would typically require them to contest the matter in the Federal Court. "We note concerns raised in the segment about GIC remission for a high-profile taxpayer, which we take seriously," the ATO's statement said. "Where concerns are raised, we aim to respond through appropriate channels, including internal review, independent oversight, and, where necessary, improvements to our systems and processes. "The public rightfully expects the highest standards of integrity, fairness and accountability from us, and we take matters raised in the segment seriously." Jason Harris, a professor of corporate law at Sydney University, said the decision to waive the interest and penalties charge had the potential to undermine public trust in the tax system. "We have an example of someone very famous seemingly getting a special deal without any explanation and that should be a matter of public concern, even outside of tax," he said. "If we had a former PM getting a waiver on a driver's licence fee we should be equally concerned. There should be transparency." The tax debt was discovered in 2012 when the tax office realised that a company owned by Mr Keating had not reported profits from a 2004 share sale. While the company, Brenlex Pty Ltd, later paid the $446,000, the ATO then demanded more than $600,000 in interest and penalties that had accrued in the eight years since the sale occurred. The negotiations stretched over three years, during which time Mr Keating's advisers asked for the debt to be written off via a tax rule called a "commissioner's discretion". Mr Keating's advisers sought the exemption because the former prime minister mistakenly believed Brenlex had paid the tax and had "inadvertently failed to advise his directors" of the sale, the advisers told the tax office. Professor Harris said a commissioner's discretion was generally applied when a taxpayer had experienced some form of unfairness, such as bad advice from an accountant, or where there had been a significant event in their life, such as the death of a loved one. He said the reason Mr Keating's advisers gave — that he had forgotten he had not complied — did not pass muster. "It's outrageous," he said. In April 2015, the ATO issued Mr Keating a statutory demand for payment of the bill, which by then had grown to $953,396. Ten days after a final letter from Mr Keating's advisers, the tax office decided to cancel the debt in full. "I am able to confirm that the GIC and Late Lodgement Penalties … have been remitted in full," a tax official wrote. "Consequently the balance of the account has been reduced to nil and the amount payable as stated in the Creditors Statutory Demand is no longer owed." The email provided no reasons for the tax office's abrupt about face after three years of resisting the arguments of Mr Keating's financial advisers. The principal tax adviser at Australia's Institute of Public Accountants, Tony Greco, said the decision to waive Mr Keating's GIC appeared unusual on its face. "From a normal perspective, forgetting to pay your tax wouldn't be a strong case for remission of the GIC," he said. "More information needs to be provided to see whether they [the tax office] acted within their discretion." Professor of taxation law at UNSW, Michael Walpole, cautioned that not enough was known about Mr Keating's matter to be able to draw any firm conclusion. Speaking generally, he said it was desirable that, as long as they relied on the appropriate protocols, the tax office be able to reach settlements with taxpayers. The ATO told Four Corners in a statement last week that "inadvertently overlooking" the need to pay tax was generally not valid grounds on which to cancel GIC. "However, there may be instances where GIC is remitted when a taxpayer inadvertently overlooks the requirement to lodge a form or make a payment, depending on the individual circumstances of the taxpayer," the ATO said.
Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Channel Seven is rocked by bombshell lawsuit from key Home and Away staff member
A veteran Home and Away scriptwriter whose name still appears on the credits of the long-running soap is the latest Seven employee to sue the network. Fiona Bozic, who has worked at Seven for more than 20 years, lodged a Fair Work claim last month in the Federal Court of Australia. Bozic filed a statement with the court under breach of general protections provisions and is being represented by Thrive Workplace Consulting & Legal. According to LinkedIn, Bozic is a script producer and scriptwriter for Seven on programs including Home and Away, and previously wrote for Network Ten's Neighbours. 'My responsibilities are broad and primarily focused on overseeing the creation of engaging, creative and compelling storylines,' her LinkedIn profile states. 'I have contributed to a variety of story themes that are appealing to diverse audiences, including domestic violence and mental health trauma. 'With responsibility of creating a detailed plot for five episodes a week, I am heavily involved in structuring episodes, creating characters and recruiting script department personnel who can add value to the process.' As part of her role, Bozic works closely 'with a range of internal stakeholders, including executives, promotions, script and production teams'. Bozic is credited as script producer in a Home and Away promotion for Lynne McGranger's upcoming farewell as Summer Bay matriarch Irene Roberts. McGranger's final scenes were shot in March and will be screened next month, bringing an end to Gold Logie-nominee's 33 years on the show. Bozic declined to discuss her specific claims against Seven when approached by the Daily Mail this week. A network spokeswoman said: 'As this matter is before the courts, Seven will not be commenting.' Bozic joins a long list of Seven employees to recently to take legal action against the network. Producer Matthew McGrane, who has worked at Seven for about 23 years - most recently on Sunrise - is currently suing his employer in the Federal Court. The exact details of McGrane's claim are unclear but it comes after he fell from his wheelchair and suffered terrible injuries while travelling from Seven's office in Sydney's Eveleigh to continue a shift at home. McGrane discussed the accident on the ABC's Four Corners program last August. He said his shift on the Sunrise program went until midnight every night, but he had reached an arrangement with management where he could leave at 9pm and finish his shift at home. The arrangement meant McGrane, who has used a wheelchair for more than 20 years, would be able to access buses before they stopped running at 11pm. Three months into the new schedule, however, he had a fall on his way to the bus. McGrane said he left the building at 9.30pm one night and while steering his wheelchair through the dark and rain hit a gap in the footpath. 'My wheels got caught. I came flying out, I landed extremely awkwardly, ended up breaking my lower arm,' he said. 'As I came out my face dragged along the pavement, I could feel my teeth scraping along the footpath because they'd actually gone through my lip. 'I was in agonising pain and I was howling like a dog. I'd actually ripped all the muscles off the bone. And they had to drill a hole into my arm to reattach the muscles.' McGrane told Four Corners that with just one functioning arm, he was trapped at home and unable to care for himself for 10 weeks. He filed a workers' compensation claim to pay for a carer. But although the injury happened while he was rostered on, Seven told his insurer there was no formal agreement allowing him to split his shift. A network spokesperson told the Daily Mail in April: 'Seven rejects the claims made by Mr McGrane and will defend its position in this matter.' 'As this is now before the courts, we are unable to comment further.' Journalist Amelia Saw launched Federal Court action against Seven under the Fair Work Act in September last year, claiming she was subjected to a hostile working environment at Spotlight in 2022. Seven 'strongly and categorically' rejected Saw's allegations and her claim was settled in January. Walkley Award-winning crime reporter Robert Ovadia commenced Federal Court proceedings for wrongful dismissal against Seven after he was sacked in June last year for allegedly inappropriate conduct. Ovadia, who denied any wrongdoing, eventually dropped that action due to the financial cost and emotional toll involved. Meanwhile, former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach is suing Seven for defamation in the Federal Court. Auerbach alleges the network made disparaging and false statements about his involvement in securing an interview with accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann, causing him to be shunned and vilified. Seven has said it will 'strenuously defend its position' in relation to Auerbach. McGrane's matter is set for an interlocutory hearing in August. Auerbach's case is listed for a case management hearing in October.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
How Australia's tax office lost billions in a simple scam
Photo: 123rf By Angus Grigg , Neil Chenoweth and Kyle Taylor , ABC News It was a scam so simple it took just minutes on your phone, where you could tell the tax office how much money to pay you, and it came through within days. The ATO loophole was so vast that tens of thousands of Australians stole a total of A$2 billion (NZ$2.2b). It was Australia's largest GST fraud. But it did not need to be this way. New details uncovered by Four Corners show the ATO was warned its systems were badly lacking, but even when it eventually discovered the fraud, it continued to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. The ATO maintains it cracked down hard on the scam, moving quickly to shut down the perpetrators and cut off the money. The case of Linden Phillips would suggest otherwise. It showcases in granular detail the ATO's failures and how, while some loopholes are closed, others are being exploited on a far larger scale. Linden Phillips was no criminal mastermind, but from his home in the Victorian river town of Mildura, he easily exploited giant flaws in the ATO's GST refund system. It was August 2021, and Phillips had just been released from jail. According to court filings, a week after his release, he "opened several bank accounts" in his own name and registered a previously created ABN for GST. That was step one. Next was proof of concept. This could have taken just two minutes and involved putting just three numbers into the ATO's systems. The ATO has only recovered A$96 million — just 5 per cent of the money stolen from the tax system. Photo: Four Corners/Sissy Reyes/ABC News Phillips did this by logging into his myGov account - available on your phone - and going to the ATO's GST page. Here, he said his fictitious earth-moving business had recorded minimal sales for the month. Phillips then said he was entitled to A$13,158 (NZ$14,364) as a GST refund. Amazingly, he did not have to specify why this was. At this stage, no one was required to check the veracity of his Business Activity Statement before paying. The ATO simply assumed he had invested in stock or capital equipment during the quarter. As the court noted, "the appellant [Phillips] did not engage in a business and had no income or outgoings for such a business". Within a week, the money was in his bank account. That was the trial run. Phillips was only just getting started. The next month, he lodged 46 separate GST refund claims seeking A$821,279 (NZ$896,000) from the ATO. The problem was that Phillips had been in jail for most of the time covered by these claims. Despite this, the ATO paid up promptly. Once again, the ATO had not made a single inquiry before paying the money. The algorithm in its system, rather than any human, approved the refund. To claim such a giant GST refund, Phillips would have needed to spend around A$9.7 million (NZ$10.6m) on his business over three years. All this while having minimal sales, yet enough cash flow to not bother claiming the GST refund each month. Somehow, this was not a red flag when the ATO was paying out the money. Just weeks after Phillips made his second claim, someone at the ATO twigged that his enterprise may not be legitimate. Finally, there was a human in the loop. An ATO officer rang Phillips and was told the statements had been prepared by his accountant, for which he provided a name and number. "The number was in fact registered to a different person… not an accountant but a painter," according to the court documents. The ATO followed up with a letter to Phillips, which he ignored. As he did to further calls and emails from the ATO. Despite the suspicious behaviour, the ATO did nothing. In the meantime, Phillips bought himself a Porsche and his mother a house. The ATO would sit on its hands for the next four months, giving pause to its claim to have cracked down hard and quickly brought the scam under control. When Phillips was caught, it had nothing to do with the ATO. He was arrested in April 2022 by Mildura detective Vanessa Power, who was searching his home looking for drugs and guns. She checked Phillips's phone and "identified a series of fraudulent ATO claims", according to Victoria Police. That led police to a further 63 offenders in the Mildura area. It was around this time that the ATO began to take the threat seriously. Four months after it first identified a problem with Phillips's GST refunds, the ATO launched Operation Protego, led by its Serious Financial Crimes taskforce. By this time, the ATO estimates A$850 million (NZ$928m) had been stolen from the tax system. Phillips was able to exploit the flaws in the ATO's GST refund scheme from his home in Mildura. Photo: Four Corners/Sissy Reyes/ABC News While Protego was operating, then-federal assistant treasurer Stephen Jones said it was "pretty easy to work out whether" someone had lodged a "legitimate" GST claim. "There's lots of analytics that the ATO can do to work out whether this is a legitimate business or not," he said. That may have been true, but the ATO was not identifying many of these false claims until after the money had been paid. It would take the tax office 18 months to get the scam under control, and by this time, A$2 billion had been stolen from the tax system. The ATO said when it launched Operation Protego that it assigned 470 extra staff to verify GST claims, and that by May 2022, "almost all fraud attempts were being stopped". All up, the ATO estimated 57,000 people were involved in the scam. Of these, just 122 have been convicted, while the ATO has only recovered A$96 million (NZ$105m) - just 5 percent of the money stolen from the tax system. The banks have helped recover another $64 million (NZ$70m) by freezing accounts. In the years leading up to the scam, the ATO's analysis showed its fraud detection systems, which should have prevented the scam, were not up to scratch. A 2018 report unearthed by Four Corners outlined how the systems were lacking. The report's author, Ali Noroozi, spent 10 years as the inspector-general of taxation. Citing the ATO's internal data, he found that its so-called risk assessment systems were only marginally better than random selection. "They have certainly been on notice that their risk assessment tools could do better," Noroozi told Four Corners. Ali Noroozi was the inspector general of taxation for a decade. Photo: Four Corners/Sissy Reyes/ABC News The tax office was slow to heed this warning, and then it also downgraded its assessment of external fraud risks from "severe" to "low" two months before the scam took off in mid-2021. It said the likelihood of risk had gone from "almost certain" to "rare". The tax office said it began building and updating new fraud detection systems even before the critical 2018 inspector-general report. But the auditor general noted one of the ATO's new fraud detection systems ran a year late and was therefore not fully switched on until January 2022. At this point, it successfully detected the massive fraud, but it still took the tax office a further three months to launch Operation Protego. The auditor general found "the ATO did not have a procedure to respond to a large-scale external fraud event" like the GST scams. Tax experts said these processes need humans in the loop. "Before money goes out the door, particularly if there's been large changes in a taxpayer's details or accounts, that should be verified," said Karen Payne, who stepped down last year as inspector-general of taxation. "Once upon a time, there was a desk audit when you first lodged your GST return to make sure you are carrying on a business that you can verify and these amounts that you're claiming are legitimate." Karen Payne says there needs to be proper verification before "money goes out the door". Photo: Four Corners/Sissy Reyes/ABC News As the Abbott government swept to power in 2013, the ATO was moving away from this model of human verification to an automated system. That would eventually see about 1000 staff - or half the people in the division responsible for the GST - lose their jobs. "I'm not sure the ATO has ever recovered from that sort of drain of knowledge and drain of skill sets," said Stephen Hathway, a liquidator currently investigating a large-scale GST fraud. "The people [at the ATO] work really hard and diligently, but there just needs to be more of them. And there needs to be more regard to getting out there in the field and making those inquiries." While the ATO has claimed to have contained smaller-scale GST frauds as part of Operation Protego, it has struggled to stop loopholes being exploited by larger-scale scams. Stephen Hathway has seen this up close. Stephen Hathway is a liquidator who currently investigates large-scale GST fraud. Photo: Four Corners/Sissy Reyes/ABC News He is currently chasing Nahi Gazal, who claims to be a wealthy Sydney property developer, but has been accused of masterminding a giant GST fraud. Gazal and his associates managed to squeeze more than $21 million (NZ$23m) out of the tax office in GST refunds. They allegedly used fake invoices to claim GST refunds for building projects that either did not exist or had been completed by other developers. Once again, the ATO did not bother to do even the most basic of checks. "It never had any legitimacy," Hathway said. "There's nothing in it that ever demonstrates any act of commerce or enterprise. The whole set of transactions were completely and utterly made up, fraudulent, had no basis." By September 2023, the ATO had issued Gazal with a $44 million (NZ$48m) tax bill, including penalty interest. Four Corners can reveal that while the ATO was chasing Gazal for that money, it failed to detect that he was using a new string of companies to continue scamming the tax office. Hathway has been funded by the ATO to pursue Gazal over this latest scheme, and has connected him to an additional 22 companies, which Hathway said had fraudulently claimed another $25 million (NZ$28.3) in GST refunds. Once again, Gazal claimed to be a property developer. "Not one bag of nails was bought from Bunnings," Hathway said. But once again, the ATO did not check before paying out the GST refunds to Gazal's companies. Hathway said the ATO never asked basic questions, like the address of the properties being developed, whether a development application had been approved, or to even look at a building contract. "I'm the liquidator after the event. And then when we're looking into the file, we find nothing," Hathway said. Hathway was not hopeful the ATO would be able to recover much of the money, and said there was nothing to stop someone else doing the same thing. Karen Payne said the tax office needed to do better, as these frauds resulted in less money for essential services. "We should all care because it raises revenues that allow the government… to fund the services that we all benefit from… health, defence, security, infrastructure… it's a pretty key part of our democracy." - ABC News
ABC News
3 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
The ATO learned it was being scammed, then paid out millions more to fraudsters
It was a scam so simple it took just minutes on your phone, where you could tell the tax office how much money to pay you, and it came through within days. The ATO loophole was so vast, tens of thousands of Australians stole a total of $2 billion. It was Australia's largest GST fraud. But it did not need to be this way. New details uncovered by Four Corners show the ATO was warned its systems were badly lacking, but even when it eventually discovered the fraud, it continued to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. The ATO maintains it cracked down hard on the scam, moving quickly to shut down the perpetrators and cut off the money. The case of Linden Phillips would suggest otherwise. It showcases in granular detail the ATO's failures and how, while some loopholes are closed, others are being exploited on a far larger scale. Linden Phillips was no criminal mastermind, but from his home in the Victorian river town of Mildura, he easily exploited giant flaws in the ATO's GST refund system. It was August 2021, and Phillips had just been released from jail. According to court filings, a week after his release, he "opened several bank accounts" in his own name and registered a previously created ABN for GST. That was step one. Next was proof of concept. This could have taken just two minutes and involved putting just three numbers into the ATO's systems. Phillips did this by logging into his myGov account — available on your phone — and going to the ATO's GST page. Here, he said his fictitious earth-moving business had recorded minimal sales for the month. Phillips then said he was entitled to $13,158 as a GST refund. Amazingly, he did not have to specify why this was. At this stage, no one was required to check the veracity of his Business Activity Statement before paying. The ATO simply assumed he had invested in stock or capital equipment during the quarter. As the court noted, "the appellant [Phillips] did not engage in a business and had no income or outgoings for such a business". Within a week, the money was in his bank account. That was the trial run. Phillips was only just getting started. The next month, he lodged 46 separate GST refund claims seeking $821,279 from the ATO. The problem was that Phillips had been in jail for most of the time covered by these claims. Despite this, the ATO paid up promptly. Once again, the ATO had not made a single inquiry before paying the money. The algorithm in its system, rather than any human, approved the refund. To claim such a giant GST refund, Phillips would have needed to spend around $9.7 million on his business over three years. All this while having minimal sales, yet enough cash flow to not bother claiming the GST refund each month. Somehow, this was not a red flag when the ATO was paying out the money. Just weeks after Phillips made his second claim, someone at the ATO twigged that his enterprise may not be legitimate. Finally, there was a human in the loop. An ATO officer rang Phillips and was told the statements had been prepared by his accountant, for which he provided a name and number. "The number was in fact registered to a different person … not an accountant but a painter," according to the court documents. The ATO followed up with a letter to Phillips, which he ignored. As he did to further calls and emails from the ATO. Despite the suspicious behaviour, the ATO did nothing. In the meantime, Phillips bought himself a Porsche and his mother a house. The ATO would sit on its hands for the next four months, giving pause to its claim to have cracked down hard and quickly brought the scam under control. When Phillips was caught, it had nothing to do with the ATO. He was arrested in April 2022 by Mildura detective Vanessa Power, who was searching his home looking for drugs and guns. She checked Phillips's phone and "identified a series of fraudulent ATO claims," according to Victoria Police. That led police to a further 63 other offenders in the Mildura area. It was around this time that the ATO began to take the threat seriously. Four months after it first identified a problem with Phillips's GST refunds, the ATO launched Operation Protego, led by its Serious Financial Crimes taskforce. By this time, the ATO estimates $850 million had been stolen from the tax system. While Protego was operating, then-federal assistant treasurer Stephen Jones said it was "pretty easy to work out whether" some had lodged a "legitimate" GST claim or not. "There's lots of analytics that the ATO can do to work out whether this is a legitimate business or not," he said. That may have been true, but the ATO was not identifying many of these false claims until after the money had been paid. It would take the tax office 18 months to get the scam under control, and by this time, $2 billion had been stolen from the tax system. The ATO said when it launched Operation Protego that it assigned 470 extra staff to verify GST claims, and that by May 2022, "almost all fraud attempts were being stopped". All up, the ATO estimated 57,000 people were involved in the scam. Of these, just 122 have been convicted, while the ATO has only recovered $96 million — just 5 per cent of the money stolen from the tax system. The banks have helped recover another $64 million by freezing accounts. In the years leading up to the scam, the ATO's analysis showed its fraud detection systems, which should have prevented the scam, were not up to scratch. A 2018 report unearthed by Four Corners outlined how the systems were lacking. The report's author, Ali Noroozi, spent 10 years as the inspector general of taxation. Citing the ATO's internal data, he found that its so-called risk assessment systems were only marginally better than random selection. "They have certainly been on notice that their risk assessment tools could do better," Mr Noroozi told Four Corners. The tax office was slow to heed this warning, and then it also downgraded its assessment of external fraud risks from "severe" to "low" two months before the scam took off in mid-2021. It said the likelihood of risk had gone from "almost certain" to "rare". The tax office said it began building and updating new fraud detection systems even before the critical 2018 inspector general report. But the auditor general noted one of the ATO's new fraud detection systems ran a year late and was therefore not fully switched on until January 2022. At this point, it successfully detected the massive fraud, but it still took the tax office a further three months to launch Operation Protego. The auditor general found "the ATO did not have a procedure to respond to a large-scale external fraud event" like the GST scams. Watch as Four Corners investigates one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in the country, tonight on ABC TV and ABC iview. Tax experts said these processes need humans in the loop. "Before money goes out the door, particularly if there's been large changes in a taxpayer's details or accounts, that should be verified," said Karen Payne, who stepped down last year as inspector general of taxation. "Once upon a time, there was a desk audit when you first lodged your GST return to make sure you are carrying on a business that you can verify and these amounts that you're claiming are legitimate." As the Abbott government swept to power in 2013, the ATO was moving away from this model of human verification to an automated system. That would eventually see around 1,000 staff — or half the people in the division responsible for the GST — lose their jobs. "I'm not sure the ATO has ever recovered from that sort of drain of knowledge and drain of skill sets," said Stephen Hathway, a liquidator currently investigating a large-scale GST fraud. "The people [at the ATO] work really hard and diligently, but there just needs to be more of them. And there needs to be more regard to getting out there in the field and making those inquiries." While the ATO has claimed to have contained smaller-scale GST frauds as part of Operation Protego, it has struggled to stop loopholes being exploited by larger-scale scams. Stephen Hathway has seen this up close. He is currently chasing Nahi Gazal, who claims to be a wealthy Sydney property developer, but has been accused of masterminding a giant GST fraud. Gazal and his associates managed to squeeze more than $21 million out of the tax office in GST refunds. They allegedly used fake invoices to claim GST refunds for building projects that either did not exist or had been completed by other developers. Once again, the ATO did not bother to do even the most basic of checks. "It never had any legitimacy," Mr Hathway said. "There's nothing in it that ever demonstrates any act of commerce or enterprise. The whole set of transactions were completely and utterly made up, fraudulent, had no basis." By September 2023, the ATO had issued Gazal with a $44 million tax bill, including penalty interest. Four Corners can reveal that while the ATO was chasing Gazal for that money, it failed to detect that he was using a new string of companies to continue scamming the tax office. Mr Hathway has been funded by the ATO to pursue Gazal over this latest scheme, and has connected him to an additional 22 companies, which Mr Hathway said have fraudulently claimed another $25 million in GST refunds. Once again, Gazal claimed to be a property developer. "Not one bag of nails was bought from Bunnings," Mr Hathway said. But once again, the ATO did not check before paying out the GST refunds to Gazal's companies. Mr Hathway said the ATO never asked basic questions, like the address of the properties being developed, whether a development application had been approved, or to even look at a building contract. "I'm the liquidator after the event. And then when we're looking into the file, we find nothing," Mr Hathway said. Mr Hathway was not hopeful the ATO would be able to recover much of the money, and said there was nothing to stop someone else from doing the same thing. Karen Payne said the tax office needed to do better, as these frauds resulted in less money for essential services. "We should all care because it raises revenues that allow the government … to fund the services that we all benefit from … health, defence, security, infrastructure … it's pretty key part of our democracy." Watch Four Corners' full investigation into the tax system, No Return, tonight from 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
ABC News
7 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
No Return: Australia's Missing Billions
The ATO is one of the most powerful and secretive institutions in the country, but for years, it's operated without effective scrutiny. In this major Four Corners investigation, award-winning financial journalists Neil Chenoweth and Angus Grigg reveal how inaction and flawed systems have allowed more than $50 billion in tax to go uncollected. They unpick how a simple scam, supercharged on social media, saw tens of thousands of Australians fraudulently claim at least $2 billion in GST refunds. They also show how corporate operators extracted millions more through fake invoices and phantom construction projects, often without triggering even basic checks. And they expose how deep cuts, digital automation and a lack of independent oversight has left one of Australia's most powerful institutions wide open to exploitation. Born of years of forensic reporting by two of Australia's most respected financial journalists in collaboration with the ABC's investigations team, No Return exposes systemic failures inside one of the nation's most opaque institutions. It demonstrates why every taxpayer should demand accountability from the very agency entrusted to uphold it. No Return, reported by Angus Grigg and Neil Chenoweth, and produced by Kyle Taylor, goes to air on Monday 28 July at 8:30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
