Confession time for Lendlease as Tax Office bears down on humungous tax rort

What is it about tax and tax dodging that an otherwise well regarded institution can scam and rort the public of half a billion dollars and blithely brush it off as “an engagement” with the ATO over an “industry consultation process” in relation to a “draft determination”?

As Lendlease and its boosters from PwC, KPMG, EY and the Law Council of Australia variously claim, this is a matter of “complexity”. There is much “grey area”, room for “interpretation”, “consultation”.

Yes, they all exploit the complexity of tax law for financial gain. But is it really that complex? The Tax Office has issued a draft tax ruling saying you can’t double dip. Lendlease has double dipped, as per a series of stories in these…