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Chris Jordan was also in the
Global Tax 50
2014 |
Chris Jordan, commissioner of taxation at the Australian
Taxation Office (ATO), has made this year's Global Tax 50 for
his work as a tax avenger.
Fighting crime has been a part of Jordan's career since his
humble beginnings as a policeman for Australia's New South
Wales police force. He only served a year in the force,
however, before the 'tax calling' became too strong and he
decided to go to university to become a tax expert.
Since his appointment as commissioner in January 2013,
Jordan has taken a less hands-on approach to fighting crime,
instead using his position to stand up directly to
multinationals and demand they pay their tax. In a joint press
conference with Scott Morrison, Australia's treasurer, to
discuss the government's actions to ensure multinationals pay
their fair share of tax, Jordan said: "We are presently doing
everything we can to ensure multinationals pay tax in Australia
on the income that they earn here. We continue to focus on
testing the current law and drawing evidence from these cases
to provide policy advice to government via the Treasury, and to
the OECD".
Throughout 2015 Jordan was directly involved in combatting
the tax issues that arose during the investigation into how
much tax companies paid to the ATO. He publicly stood up to
multinationals such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, BHP Billiton
and Chevron, taking them to task over hundreds of millions of
unpaid tax.
"They went too far," he told the Sydney Morning
Herald. "Traditionally, tax schemes might have taken 25%
or 30% of company profits off the table. But these people took
the lot. In the past the ATO was not prepared to chase this
aggressively."
Jordan has adopted a more direct way of dealing with evasion
and aggressive avoidance: "[If] you are 'structuring in'
aggressively, we will go after you aggressively".
Jordan has been reinventing the ATO since he became
commissioner and during his speech to the Australian Tax
Institute's 30th national convention in March 2015 he outlined
the next part of his plan to stop tax abuse and improve
administration.
"We can no longer have a culture of risk aversion or simply
doing things the way they've always been done. We are trying
new things, listening and responding to feedback and putting
ourselves in the client's shoes," says Jordan.
"Many things influence people's attitudes to paying tax;
fairness, complexity, social norms, personal beliefs, economic
conditions, advice and relationship with their tax
practitioner, and the experience they have with the ATO."
Jordan's plan to combat avoidance involves pursuing ATO
compliance initiatives to challenge taxpayer operating
principles, as well as continuing to work with the Treasury and
international counterparts on implementation of the OECD's BEPS
recommendations.
2015 also saw Jordan take on the vice-chairmanship of the
OECD's Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) with responsibility
for revitalising the joint international tax shelter
information centre (JITSIC) network. JITSIC involves tax
administrations cooperating to identify and curb abusive tax
avoidance arrangements. Australia was one of the four founding
members of JITSIC back in 2009, but the network has lost
momentum in recent years, hence Jordan's task of breathing
fresh life into it.
Jordan is bullish about the year ahead. His confidence is
rooted in the fact that information sharing has never been as
prevalent as it is today, with even more transparency on the
way.
"Let me make one thing clear – with so many tax
authorities committed to working closely together, at
Australia's instigation, we will have much more timely and
detailed information available to us on aggressive tax
avoidance," he says Jordan.
"I will be seeking tangible outcomes and developments in
what can be a complex and difficult area of tax
administration."