The Tax Office is labouring to be helpful under a pile of complex legislation.
The Australian Taxation Office can be blamed for a lot. Sometimes the blame is justified. Everyone working through the weekend to prepare for the end of the financial year will be cursing the ATO for all manner of things. But responsibility for the country's tax system doesn't rest entirely with the ATO.
Incomprehensible tax legislation, which even the tax commissioner admits most taxpayers have no hope of understanding, is as much a fault of politicians as of the ATO. It's not the ATO's fault that "tax reform" is the slogan politicians utter when they have no intention of any such thing.
Sometimes the ATO gets things right. On such occasions the ATO could not unreasonably hope to receive, if not congratulations, then at least an acknowledgement it was trying to be helpful.
However when it comes to public relations, the ATO can't seem to take a trick. The ATO's recent efforts at trying to be a little more open and transparent resulted in it being abused by Australia's inveterate complainant, Dick Smith.
In March the tax commissioner, Michael D'Ascenzo, launched a booklet, Wealthy and Wise: A tax guide for Australia's wealthiest people. The booklet is a handy guide for the "highly wealthy" (the 1200 Australians worth more than $30 million). It can be summarised into three key points.
First: don't cheat on your tax.
Second: if you do cheat on your tax there's a good chance you'll be caught. The ATO helpfully points out that financial penalties and imprisonment are not the worst of the consequences that can befall convicted tax cheats.
"The greatest cost of non-compliance can be the damage done to the individual's reputation and standing in the eyes of the wider Australian community."
The ATO could have gone on to say, but didn't, that a mob of television cameramen camping out on the front lawn of the family home is not a pleasant experience.
Third: regardless of anything your accountant tells you, you're still responsible if something goes wrong.
When Dick Smith received Wealthy and Wise in the mail he hit the roof. His reaction made media headlines earlier this week. He promised to consider becoming the "greatest legal tax minimiser in the history of Australia". He didn't like being told that because he was "highly wealthy" his tax affairs were therefore subjected to closer scrutiny.
Smith made it sound as if minimising tax was a bad thing. But as Wealthy and Wise explicitly says, every taxpayer has the right "to legally minimise their business costs, protect and maintain their wealth and build their businesses".
Nothing stops Smith making a voluntary donation to the government.
Smith was also angry that the government wastes his taxes. It's a wonder it's taken this long for him to get angry about something that governments have been doing since time immemorial. He claimed that a billion dollars of taxpayers' money had been lost on the Seasprite helicopters project.
This was money that could have been spent on building a new hospital. This is true, but so what? The ATO is a powerful organisation but it doesn't yet make decisions about defence procurement.
Much of what is in Wealthy and Wise is common sense and unobjectionable. What's pleasing (and not a little surprising) is that it had something positive to say about the rich.
"Wealthy people are behind some of Australia's largest and most successful businesses. They employ many Australians and significantly contribute to our economy and tax revenue. Many take on a great deal of personal risk to build their businesses."
Maybe someone in the ATO has been reading the speeches of John Hutton, the British Minister for Enterprise.
A few months ago Hutton said some very un-Labour things. "So rather than questioning whether high salaries are morally justified, we should celebrate the fact that people can be enormously successful in this country ... It would be a good thing for our country if there were more millionaires in Britain, not fewer."
Although the Rudd government has mimicked much of Britain's "New Labour", it's difficult to imagine any federal minister going quite as far as Hutton. Our domestic politicians are far more comfortable castigating executives for being paid too much.
As bizarre as it sounds, maybe next time the issue of executive salaries comes up, our politicians could take a leaf out of the ATO's booklet and start talking about how fortunate Australia is to have so many wealthy people.
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