Bottom of the harbour tax avoidance was a form of tax avoidance used in Australia in the 1970s. Legislation (below) made it a criminal offence in 1980. The practice came to symbolise the worst of variously contrived tax strategies from those times.
In its 1986/87 annual report, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) stated a total 6,688 companies had been involved, involving revenue of between $500 million and $1 billion.
Read more about Bottom Of The Harbour Tax Avoidance: Operation, Deputy Crown Solicitor Debacle, Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act 1980, Taxation (Unpaid Company Tax) Assessment Act 1982
Famous quotes containing the words bottom of, bottom, harbour, tax and/or avoidance:
“At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Patience, the beggar’s virtue, Shall find no harbour here.”
—Philip Massinger (1583–1640)
“As a Tax-Paying Citizen of the United States I am entitled to a voice in Governmental affairs.... Having paid this unlawful Tax under written Protest for forty years, I am entitled to receive from the Treasury of “Uncle Sam” the full amount of both Principal and Interest.”
—Susan Pecker Fowler (1823–1911)
“Tax avoidance means that you hire a $250,000-fee lawyer, and he changes the word ‘evasion’ into the word ‘avoidance.’”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)