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:
“There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wrecks,
A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“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)