Nassim Khadem

Behnam Roohizadegan thought he’d won a record $5.2 million payout against publicly-listed company TechnologyOne, but now the case is being retried, dragging on years of anguish he claims he has suffered at the hands of the big corporation.

Australia’s competition watchdog, the ACCC, will be given far stronger powers to prevent companies making repeated under-the-radar acquisitions that could harm competition and consumers. The changes are the biggest reforms to merger settings in almost 50 years.

Two federal ombudsmen have joined forces to launch a scathing review of the Australian Tax Office and call on government agencies to act more fairly when they chase people for debts.

The Reserve Bank has left interest rates on hold amid signs that growth in the economy has dramatically slowed down. Some economists have pushed out their forecasts for rate cuts to November, as RBA Governor Michele Bullock explains why it’s too soon to cut rates.

The ATO is chasing more than $34 billion in debts owed by small businesses and self-employed Australians that were put on hold during the pandemic, sending some businesses to the wall.

The Tax Office is owed tens of billions of dollars worth of income tax debts it once dismissed as being “uneconomical to pursue”. It’s a shock for many taxpayers to now have the debts resurrected, in some cases after more than a decade.

Lending for home loans has fallen. Meanwhile, the nation’s would-be first Islamic bank fails to get a full licence. And the ASX 200 closes higher after stocks in Commonwealth Bank hit a record high.

If the directors think the company’s prospects are bright, some investors say it’s not fair to clear a lot of small investors from the share register. This is what Zip did and that left some of its smaller investors infuriated.

Outgoing ATO boss Chris Jordan said “Australians love their work-related expense deductions” and abolishing them in favour of lower personal income tax rates “would be a big step”. Mr Jordan also called GST fraud promoted on Tik Tok, which saw some 150 tax office officials investigated, as a ‘shock’ and said ATO systems were never designed to deal with such a massive scale of fraud.

At least 150 Australian Taxation Office officials have been investigated as part of a GST fraud crackdown, resulting in “employment terminations and criminal proceedings”, according to a new report from Australia’s auditor-general.