You know, paying your taxes is pretty important for the country. It may not be popular but tax revenue challenges are vital to the future of this nation. ATO $2 billion scam failure lets down Australia. The ABC’s 4 Corners has exposed huge holes in the ATO automated system to the tune of billions of dollars. Local scammers and criminals have plundered the tax office to an extraordinary scale over recent years. The disappointing nature of this is not only the embarrassing hit to the nation’s coffers but the fact that ATO retrenchments directly contributed to the appalling loss and theft of funds.

“It was a scam so simple it took just minutes on your phone, where you could tell the tax office how much money to pay you, and it came through within days. The ATO loophole was so vast that tens of thousands of Australians stole a total of $2 billion. It was Australia’s largest GST fraud. But it did not need to be this way.”

• (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-28/ato-tax-office-gst-scam-billions-fraud-four-corners/105573446)

Aussie Tax Office Automated Failings Cost Billions

Once again, I imagine that no one will be held accountable for this financial disaster in the billions. Just like the Robodebt scandal, which also cost the nation billions of dollars. The smart consultants and senior public servants who recommended the automation and lack of human oversight in the ATO system, which resulted in tens of thousands of fake claims paid out  to the tune of $2 billion, will receive no admonishment or consequences. These high earning individuals, seemingly, walk on water downunder. At the same time, messaging about tax fraud and doing the right thing rings in the ears of the rest of us.

Automated ATO $2 Billion F*** Up Costs Australia

ATO $2 billion scam failure lets down Australia. Have a think about the people, you know, the human beings who could have had jobs at the ATO protecting our tax revenue during this period. These people would have had families who benefited from the income derived from these jobs. We are constantly told that computers do it better and now it is AI that does it so much better than human beings. Marketing tosh trotted out by companies contracted to do the PR. Here is a giant sized example of the bullshit inherent in these claims about automation. Remember Robodebt, which wrongly and illegally claimed half a million Australians owed money in the thousands to Centrelink. This automated system caused the deaths by suicide of desperate vulnerable people. When are we going to wake up to the falsity of these grand claims. Robodebt has cost the Australian people at least $10 billion and counting in settled class actions, Royal Commission, and ongoing NACC investigations. These are facts.

Sacking Workers & Replacing Them With Machines

Bean counters and consultants recommending half arsed computerised systems, which in this case have cost the nation $2 billion. Unchecked fake claims for business expenses green lighted ATO payments to crooks and scammers in vast amounts of money. The automated system had huge holes in it and no human oversight. The accountants would have been happy at the time having reduced the employment bill at the ATO – machines do it better, you know. Get ready for more of this, as the AI revolution begins. It is only via investigative journalism by the ABC that we are hearing about this – otherwise the government would keep it under wraps. They blow trumpets rolling this shit out but when things go wrong they are schtumm.  ATO $2 billion scam failure lets down Australia.

AI Will Decimate Australian Tax Revenues

Australia depends upon income tax from workers for the lion’s share of its tax revenue. This appalling loss of $2 billion by the ATO shows how sloppy and loose they are around businesses and companies. This is how things are set up in Australia, the poorer workers cop all the policing whilst white collar stuff happens willy nilly. Billions being ripped off in white collar crime all the time. Nearly 100 millionaires paid no tax on their million dollar earnings in Australia last financial year. Instead individually they spent hundreds of thousands on their tax accountants to ensure that they paid no tax. This encapsulates the attitude of the rich to paying tax downunder. Even, James Packer, the son of billionaire and anti-tax champion the late Kerry Packer, warns that AI will decimate tax revenue in Australia. Why? Because, as AI takes the jobs of hundreds of thousands the income tax drop off will cripple the country’s revenue. Those in love with technology have not really considered the bigger picture. That is the trouble with the segmented nature of private enterprise and neoliberalism – a lack of oversight. See a theme here folks?

Big Tech Doesn’t Pay Its Fair Share Of Tax

Of course, the Big Tech multinationals don’t pay their fair share of tax downunder, as they shift their profits to the Virgin Islands and Ireland – low tax territories. Corporates everywhere do this now and Donald Trump is running a protection racquet for them on this basis. All that money you spend with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, News Corp, Uber and the rest, these companies pay bugger all tax in Australia despite generating billions here. Thus, we are done out of our necessary funds for health, education and the military by these corporations. It is time to rethink where we spend our money and whose side you are on in this vital tax revenue situation. Large companies are not paying their fair share of tax and accountants have a lot do with it. Tax may be boring for many, as a topic, but the current state of affairs is costing you a lot of money. If these massively wealthy companies will not pay their fair share of tax the government is coming after you and me for that necessary revenue instead.

“There needs to be a de-Americanisation process in the business world. These recently established practices, which aggrandize CEOs and the executive, are, in actual fact, anathema to the wellbeing of the rest of us. The huge growth in wealth inequality and the divide between the 1% and the rest are a direct result of this sick American corporate culture. Private equity is another less transparent disease sickening the world as a whole. Social Darwinism is back with us under the guise of ‘greed is good’ capitalism. The Trump regime’s, recently passed, big bill is an abomination that takes from the poor and needy and enriches the already very wealthy. It will cost lives, some say around 50, 000 lives each year in America as a result of the cuts to Medicaid. “

• (https://wordsforweb.com.au/sick-american-corporate-culture/)

Conclusions

Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters and America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.

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