Latest news with #Hirschhorn
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
ATO warning as Aussies follow growing trend to boost tax returns: ‘Big difference'
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is urging taxpayers not to use ChatGPT for their tax advice. Tax time is just around the corner and many people are looking for ways to boost their return. AI tools like ChatGPT have been booming in popularity and people are going to them to ask everything, including help with their work, meal planning and even tax advice. But ATO second commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn has pleaded with people not to do this. 'I would caution against using AI for your tax advice,' Hirschhorn told the audience at the Financial Review AI Summit. RELATED ATO warning to millions of Aussies desperate for $1,519 cash boost: 'Misconception' Tradie reveals surprising industry where he makes '$300,000 to a million' a year Centrelink cash boost over 400,000 Aussies have weeks left to confirm: 'Get what's yours' 'Whether it's an agent or not, it's probably only a slightly better version of the barbecue [advice] for a couple of reasons. 'Tax is small changes in facts that make a big difference in outputs, and so it's very hard for an AI model to get those nuances.' 'And indeed, how do you know you're getting an Australian tax answer? If the audience is to take something from this speech, please don't use ChatGPT for your tax advice.' CPA Australia tax lead Jenny Wong has issued a similar warning and told people to treat ChatGPT and other OpenAI tools with caution. 'AI tools are only as good as the information you put into them,' she said. 'It may be tempting to ask AI bots for tips, but they are simply not able to compute the nuances of the Australian tax system or your specific circumstances.' The ATO said it was aware of taxpayers using AI to produce fraudulent documents, including false invoices. 'There have been recent examples of fraudulent documents submitted by taxpayers during the audit process,' a spokesperson said. The ATO said it can double-check financial data against bank records, and anyone found to have used AI tools to fabricate documents can face financial penalties and a criminal investigation. Taxpayers are ultimately responsible for all information in their tax return, including if they rely on inaccurate information from ChatGPT. Exaggerating a claim could have severe consequences, while making false tax claims could result in hefty fines, a criminal record or even in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
USA Today
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Favorite music? Your friends' sex lives? Diddy jury selection may surprise you
Favorite music? Your friends' sex lives? Diddy jury selection may surprise you Show Caption Hide Caption What we know now about Sean 'Diddy' Combs' pre-trial court appearance Sean "Diddy" Combs was in court for a pre-trial hearing in his federal sex crimes case. What was decided in today's hearing? Here is what we know now. NEW YORK ― If your significant other cheated on you, could you get past it? At first blush, the answer might not seem relevant to Sean "Diddy" Combs' upcoming sex-trafficking trial. But it's the surprising type of clue lawyers may look for in picking jurors. The hip-hop mogul faces charges that he trafficked women for "freak off" sex parties and ran a criminal enterprise that included kidnapping and forced labor. If he's found guilty, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. On May 5, prosecutors and Combs' defense will begin the crucial step of selecting jurors. The process includes potential jurors filling out a written questionnaire and answering verbal questions from the judge, or possibly even from the lawyers. The judge can eliminate potential jurors who can't attend the full trial for personal reasons or can't commit to being fair and impartial. Each side will then get a chance to eliminate a limited number of remaining potential jurors for their own reasons. The defense didn't respond to a request for comment on how it's preparing for jury selection, and the prosecution declined to comment. However, USA TODAY talked to jury and trial experts about what it could look like. Here's what they said: Response to cheating? Testing if jurors can compartmentalize violent Cassie video One of the most difficult pieces of evidence for Combs may be a video depicting him dragging and kicking his ex-girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, in a hotel hallway. Judge Arun Subramanian ruled in late April that prosecutors, who say the video took place during a "Freak Off" and is "devastating proof" of sex trafficking, can show it to the jury. Combs' defense team has argued in court filings that the video was doctored. Robert Hirschhorn, a lawyer and jury consultant, told USA TODAY that the defense may deal with the video by arguing that Combs was overcharged: he might be guilty of domestic violence, but prosecutors instead charged him with sex trafficking. Hirschhorn has represented several high-profile clients such as George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder and manslaughter in the death of Black teenager Trayvon Martin. If the judge allows it, Hirschhorn might ask potential jurors if they are the type of people who could work through and compartmentalize their significant other cheating, or whether that would forever affect the relationship. The answer might help gauge if the person could also get past the video. "Everybody that says, 'compartmentalize,' I don't care what else they say – Unless they say, 'I already think Diddy's guilty,' I'm putting them on the jury every day," Hirschhorn said. The juror that couldn't get past the cheating? "They're a dog with a bone," Hirschhorn said. "They can't ever forget about it. That's the juror that will convict." Race, gender, and sexual assault experiences Wealthy defendants in particular will sometimes hold mini-trials with focus groups and send out surveys about the case. It's all part of developing profiles of people you want on your jury, and perhaps especially of people you don't want. "Jury selection is really jury de-selection," Eric Rudich, a social psychologist and litigation strategist at Blueprint Trial Consulting, told USA TODAY. "It's not what you're looking for. It's the people that you feel like they're going to be really bad for you." Prosecutors may seek to root out people who are wary of the government. Several of the questions that prosecutors want potential jurors to be asked have to do with feelings on law enforcement and experiences with the government. Experiences with sexual assault or with being accused of assault could also be a major factor. Both sides have proposed questions to potential jurors about those experiences. Prosecutors "want to try to keep on this jury any woman that has been the victim of some kind of unwanted sexual contact," Hirschhorn said. Combs' team wants potential jurors to describe the music they like as well as their opinions about the hip-hop and rap music industry. That could be an avenue for figuring out if a potential juror has a bias towards Combs either because of his race or the industry he is in. "You can't strike jurors based on ethnicity unless they reveal explicit bias," Rudich said. "But questions about people's opinions about hip-hop culture, P. Diddy in general – that's going to probably reveal attitudes and predilections for favoring one side or another." Feelings on alternative sexual lifestyles? Combs' lead attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said in an April hearing that the defense team plans to tell jurors at trial that Combs belonged to an alternative sexual lifestyle as they make their case that he didn't traffic women. "Call it swingers," Agnifilo said. "Swinging" involves singles or people in committed relationships who engage in consensual, non-monogamous sexual behavior. The defense team's proposed questionnaire suggests they want to know if jurors are openminded to that kind of lifestyle or would hold it against Combs. "There may be evidence in this case about people engaging in relationships with multiple sexual partners. Would hearing about that type of evidence affect your ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror in this case?" the questionnaire asks. To the extent that potential jurors open up about their own experiences or lifestyles within their social circles, that could be one of the best measures of whether they could be receptive to Combs' defense, according to Hirschhorn. "I'd want to know if anybody's ever experimented with things like swapping, or any of that kind of outside-of-the-norm sexual behavior," Hirschhorn said. "If you know somebody that's a swinger – I'd take that juror." Hung jury? Finding the one who just won't go along The prosecution's goal in Combs' criminal trial isn't just to find one juror who concludes Combs is guilty. It needs all 12 jurors to agree in order to win a conviction. That's not necessarily the strategy for Combs' defense team. While they also need a unanimous verdict to win an acquittal, a divided jury would force the prosecution to decide if it wants to try him again, and the judge might not allow for retrial after retrial after retrial. That disparity means one kind of juror the defense in particular may want is someone who just doesn't like to go with the crowd. "The defense wants people who are iconoclastic, who will in some way feel that there is a dominant culture out there that is trying to impose things on the rest of society," Mitchell Epner, a longtime New York litigator and former federal prosecutor, told USA TODAY. Combs' defense has said it wants potential jurors asked about their decision-making styles in groups, including whether they go with what the majority favors. It has also proposed asking jurors about the political commentators they listen to and whether they belong to any clubs. "You love an acquittal, obviously, but a hung jury is also a win for your client," Rudich said. "All you need is one juror to find for you." Aysha Bagchi covers the Justice Department for USA TODAY. She is an attorney, Harvard Law graduate, and Rhodes Scholar. You can follow her on X and Bluesky at @AyshaBagchi.
CNBC
29-04-2025
- Health
- CNBC
The outdated health idea that's holding women back in life and careers
Twenty-five years ago, Joanna Strober invested in a company called BabyCenter. Twenty-five years later, the company is still serving women, "a lot of women," Strober says. She was a pregnant venture investor at the time she made the BabyCenter investment, and it helped to spark a bigger idea: for too long, she says, the storyline for women facing challenges has been "just deal with it." "It's a weird thing ... and that's just really unhealthy, and we have to change that," Strober said at the recent CNBC Changemakers Summit in Los Angeles. For Chelsea Hirschhorn, having her first child led her to become "totally disillusioned" with the chasm between the image of new parenthood that was marketed and the reality she experienced. "The picture-perfect image of parenting was overwhelming for a new parent," she said. "There was a big dichotomy between the content I was consuming and the front-line experience at 3 a.m." Hirschhorn says there was no data available at the time to substantiate what she felt because the topic was understudied and underfunded, so she "took on" the category of infant health and wellness. "For whatever reason," Hirschhorn says, she had "the conviction to think I could fix this." While there is a distinction between the health markets the two female CEO and founders focus on — not every woman will become pregnant but all will go through menopause — one big idea binds the two women leaders together: for far too long, they say, women have been expected to suffer. "We have this idea that perimenopause is at a certain time and people think they have to suffer for a really long time before they get the right care, but what we say is you don't have to suffer at all," Strober shared at the Changemakers Summit. "As soon as you're in your 30s and anything starts feeling wrong, you should get help. The idea of suffering is really outdated," she said. "Women have been trained to suffer for far too long." Strober and Hirschhorn were both named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list. (Actress and entrepreneur Naomi Watts, who has become a leading advocate for menopause health after struggling with early menopause at the height of her Hollywood fame, was also among the 2025 Changemakers.) At the Changemakers Summit on April 8, the two women CEOs shared advice and lessons from their successes bringing new business ideas to health care. Here are a few of the key themes they touched on in a discussion with CNBC's Kate Rooney. In addition to "the dearth of information" that exists to prepare women for the reality of parenthood, educational content for women has been censored when on the topics of reproductive health. That was something that Hirschhorn learned once she started Frida, a time when it was "almost impossible," she says, to find authentic storytelling on the subject matter. "Sixty percent of women's health ads content, or content in general, has been in some way, shape or form, rejected or filtered," she said. That's not just online but on linear television, part of what Hirschhorn calls a "very gendered dichotomy," citing the fact that male health and sexual wellness content is approved at a significantly higher rate. That leaves her "incredulous," she said, and she added it is a call to action to shift from women's health being a topic of provocation to a topic of public health. "Women have to advocate for themselves," she said. "Women can't be complacent and this goes beyond health care. This can drive real change, in retail ... in every facet of life," she added. Strober noted that when she was building Midi Health it became clear that a major challenge would be working with special codes created by the insurance industry for menopause, in effect, another form of institutional censorship. Midi Health decided to position itself as an in-network primary care provider that had a specialty in menopause and that turned out to be a "really effective" way to gain traction, and it now has nationwide insurance coverage with all the large insurance companies in the U.S. "They are not necessarily going to cover sexual health issues but they will cover primary care, so you just subsume it," she explained. "By viewing menopause as just part of women's health, we were able to create a reimbursement mechanism for standard insurance regulation." That insurance coverage is a very big deal, because research is showing that lack of menopause treatment can have a high cost when it comes to women's careers. A study Strober pointed to during the Changemakers discussion found that at the mid-career moment when women should be gaining their greatest successes, the shift into menopause can hold them back. Strober said the growing body of research details how menopause can result in discrimination at work, with women quitting jobs, or not going for raises or promotions because of symptoms, and also because they don't believe they can get the treatment that they need. "If you believe that you have something that can't be fixed, it's very embarrassing, and that means people step back from what they are doing," Strober said. "They are scared," she added. That can be the experience what is called brain fog and hot flashes. "You lose power during hot flashes," Strober said. "People are not as confident. But if you are getting treated for it, 'it's just a hot flash' and you can regain power," she added. Hirschhorn says that by the numbers, there is still "so much untapped potential in the women's health market." It is estimated to grow to $60 billion by 2027, she said, and that is despite the fact that less than 4% of health-care R&D spending and investment goes to the category — a "seismic gap," she said. It is a well-known fact in consumer research that women dominate household spending, but Hirschhorn said in Frida's market there is a "viral" opportunity that is underappreciated. "Creating products for women based on real need creates a virality that is hard to recreate with other demographics," she said. "These women aren't just buying their products, they are selling them to their communities and friends. We call that 'word of mom," Hirschhorn said. "It's a really big untapped opportunity," she added. As a former venture investor, Strober said it is important to accept that "people are not dying to invest in women's health," but she said when you can show the growth that companies like Midi Health are posting now, that won't matter. "We are the fastest-growing digital health company, probably ever, quite honestly," she said. "We are growing insanely fast because women really need access to this care and can't get it elsewhere," she added. It is the financial model that Midi Health can put in front of investors to demonstrate the size of the growth opportunity that makes the case. Similar to the "virality" experienced by Frida, Strober says the business model does build on itself. "Once you take care of one thing for women they come back to you for something else, and if you develop this trusted platform for them, where they become your long-term patient, that is a good business," she said. "We don't say it's a women's business, we say it's a really good business," she added. That opportunity and the unfiltered realities of parenthood have now grown Frida to more than 150 products, covering everything from conception to post-partum and breastfeeding care, and beyond. "My four children are a hotbed of inspiration and my 'snot sucking' days are almost over," Hirschhorn said. But she added, "The same problems exist, you just need a different toolkit." At Midi Health, Strober says the next big opportunity to unlock is making connections between menopause health and longevity. "If you take care of yourself in your 40s you can really prevent a lot of the diseases that come in your 80s, and so we have been thinking a lot about this longevity market," Strober said. "It's all bros, all the bros who are out there and talking about wanting to live to 150. We just want to take care of ourselves. We don't care about living to 150. We just want to be healthy grandmas," she said. "What do we do, how do we take care of our brains and bones and hearts to age in a healthy way?" she said. Strober says there are many steps women's health companies will help women take in their 40s, 50s and 60s to better answer that question.
