Last week The Tax Institute participated in the bi-annual Treasury Revenue Group Stakeholder Consultation meeting. These meetings are a Treasury initiative that started last year after the Government's Tax Forum. They are a welcome addition to Treasury's increased openness with respect to tax policy.

Treasury provided a presentation on the 2012 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook as well as further details on their recent internal restructure aimed at better focusing resources and building further expertise in areas such as law design and small business tax issues.

On behalf of the attendees, I lead a discussion on the proposed ethical framework for tax consultations, about which I have written in previous posts. Effective consultation is essential to produce tax laws that are in the broader national interest and this framework has the potential to enhance this.

We also discussed tax reform opportunities stemming from the Australia in the Asian Century white paper as well as upcoming developments in the arena of state tax reform.

Robert Jeremenko

Robert Jeremenko CTA is Senior Tax Counsel of The Tax Institute.

The Tax Institute is Australia’s leading professional association in tax. Its 13,000 members include tax agents, accountants and lawyers as well as tax practitioners in corporations, government and academia.