False posts questioning Australian tax body's authority spew legal 'nonsense': court

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 17, 2023 at 07:33
2 min read
By AFP Australia

False social media posts have reshared sham tax advice from a widely discredited organisation that the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) "does not legally exist". The posts actually cite the long-defunct Institute of Taxation Research, which lost dozens of cases in various Australian courts after various judges rejected the organisation's "deceptive" and "nonsense" anti-tax arguments.

The false claim was shared on Facebook on January 12, 2023.

The lengthy post reads in part: "BREAKING NEWS!!!!! The I.T.R. (Institute of Taxation Research) has now received irrefutable proof (through an exhaustive Freedom of Information Act search), that the Australian Taxation Office was never officially gazetted in 1973 at its formation.

"Legally, therefore, the A.T.O. does not exist!"

Similar false posts were also shared on Facebook here and here.

A screenshot of the post as of February 15, 2023.

According to this record from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the ITR was registered as a company in 1999 and ceased operating in 2009.

An archive of its website here shows the same false claim against the ATO. The site said the ITR offered consumers "assistance with taxation matters".

But as early as 2000, the Federal Court of Australia had already rejected the ITR's arguments against the legal existence of the ATO.

"The discussion of the arguments put ... demonstrates that they are untenable – indeed one might even say of them that they were nonsense," reads a federal court decision here issued on May 23, 2000.

A media release published on February 22, 2001 by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said the ITR had been engaging in "misleading and deceptive conduct" in the provision of taxation advice.

"In more than 35 cases, the courts have rejected the arguments," the release says.

Court rulings involving the ITR have been published here.

Taxation powers

Contrary to the false posts, although Australia's principal revenue agency was only named the ATO in 1973, it actually traces its origins back to 1910 when it was known as the Federal Taxation Office and the Commonwealth Taxation Office.

Reports about the agency being renamed in 1973 were announced in official government publications here and here.

The ATO's existence is not contingent on it being mentioned in a government gazette, Dr Lex Fullarton, adjunct professor at Curtin Law School, told AFP.

"The bottom line is that the Commonwealth Government collects taxes under the powers conferred on it by the States on 1 January 1901," Fullarton said.

This authority has been challenged in the First Uniform Tax Case 1942 and again in the Second Uniform Tax Case in 1957, he said.

"Both failed dismally," he said.

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