Tax officer 2030 : the exercise of discretion and artificial intelligence

This article examines the principles underpinning effective decision-making and the exercise of discretion in Australian taxation law in the context of the development of digital government and the increasing use of artificial intelligence. The article proposes a framework for the exercise of discretion by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in decision-making involving expert systems and emerging supervised machine learning and deep learning, consistent with administrative law. The framework is of wider relevance to public sector delegated decision-making and it draws on relevant principles and case law. It identifies the capabilities the ATO requires to implement this framework and maintain public trust in the new systems

Digital tax administration: transforming the workforce to deliver

This article provides the global context for digital tax administration and the radical change to the administration workforce. It examines the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to implement digital taxation and identifies the importance of a holistic workforce strategy. The article examines the elements of a data-driven human resource management strategy required to shape and develop an appropriate workforce. It shows that this ranges from revision of classification and role definition to comprehensive training. The article identifies the characteristics of an effective training system and the range of appropriate delivery methods to support strategy implementation. The article demonstrates that, as all tax administrations transform, the effectiveness of that transformation to digital delivery depends on developing a workforce with the right skillset. It shows that despite the competition for skills, a carefully planned and implemented strategy can build depth of capability appropriate to the jurisdiction and its state of development. © 2020. All Rights Reserved

Timeless principles of taxpayer protection: how they adapt to digital disruption

Digital transformation will pose growing challenges to tax revenues and systems of taxation that were designed for another century. The tax rules may hasten slowly, but the record of response to the challenges of electronic commerce, and of base erosion and profit shifting, shows that tax administration is more adaptable. This article identifies the detailed nature of technological changes in electronics and systems; big data, automation and artificial intelligence; and security, including blockchain; as those changes affect tax administration. It highlights the critical taxpayer rights issues and applies accepted taxpayer rights frameworks. The article concludes that taxpayer rights principles are both highly adaptable to a digital world, and provide useful guidance to where urgent action and further research are required. © 2019 UNSW Business School™

Taxpayer rights in Australia twenty years after the introduction of the taxpayers' charter

Twenty years after the introduction of the Australian Taxpayers' Charter this article reviews its purpose, its development and its sufficiency to meet future challenges. It outlines, in the context of developments in compliance theory, the Charter's important role in developing trust between taxpayers and the Australian Taxation Office. However, the article outlines future challenges and identifies the growing importance of research into a balanced legal and compliance framework. The article sets out a legal rights pyramid to balance the compliance pyramid and argues that it creates stability for the system and makes a trust based compliance environment more likely. © 2016 AgBioForum. All rights reserved

Politics and tax reform: a comparative analysis of the implementation of a broad-based consumption tax in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom

PublishedArticleAuthors' post-print version. Revenue Law Journal is an open access journal.The introduction of a broad-based consumption tax in the form of a value added tax (VAT) in the United Kingdom (UK) and goods and services tax (GST) in New Zealand and Australia was politically challenging at the time. This article provides the rationale for their introduction and the process of that introduction in different political contexts. It discusses whether there are lessons that can be drawn as to the political indicators that may need to be present for implementation of significant tax reform, with particular reference to GST reform in Australia

A systematic ALCHEMI study of Fe-doped NiAl alloys

ALCHEMI site-occupation studies of alloying additions to ordered aluminide intermetallic alloys have been performed with varying degrees of success, depending on the ionization delocalization correction. This study examines the variation in the site-occupancy of Fe in B2-ordered NiAl vs solute concentration and alloy stoichiometry. The fraction of Fe on the `Ni` site is plotted vs Fe concentration. The good separation among the data from alloys of the three stoichiometries shows that the site occupancy of iron depends on the relative concentrations of the Ni and Al host elements; however a preference for the `Ni` site is clearly indicated