At a glance
Bridging the gap
“The Ralph Review identified a lot of frustration in the business community about little and really not much opportunity at all for the private sector to engage in formal consultations with government agencies responsible for developing tax policy and law.
“To address the frustration in the business community, the Howard Government established a non-statutory advisory body, the board, as a way to get effective community input into the development of tax policy and on a more transparent, systematic and ongoing basis.”
Voluntary tax transparency code
“It is a set of principles and minimum standards to guide businesses as to the types of tax information that should be disclosed for them to be transparent about how they pay tax.
“The code was developed for a multitude of reasons, but primarily in response to community concerns and expectations for businesses, particularly large multinationals, to take the lead to be more transparent about their tax affairs.”
Influence on board reviews
“One of the biggest ways listeners can influence what issues the board reviews is to engage with us, [via] the ‘Sounding Board +’ platform on our website or through involvement in our consultation process, whether that be formal reviews and other targeted engagement.
“Sounding Board + is an online platform... where stakeholders can basically upload ideas directly to the board on how to reform the tax system. It provides members of the community with a voice and an opportunity to be part of the conversation around improving the tax system in Australia.”
Stakeholder engagement
“We have launched a new and exciting stakeholder engagement strategy. We have looked at how we have engaged in the past and thought how we can do things better, and we are changing how we interact with stakeholders, how we gather ideas from them and gather a really important intelligence.
“The goal here is to meet with stakeholder groups that can provide a diverse range of insights to support the board’s work. How we are achieving this is by organising stakeholder
events based on themes, which are held around Australia.”
