How Shipton's $9,000 tax advice bill grew to six figures

James-Shipton/ANAO/ASI/

18 November 2020
| By Mike |
image
image
expand image

The tax advice provided to stood-aside Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) chair, James Shipton was originally estimated as likely to cost $9,000 but ended up costing $118,000.

The Senate Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services has been told by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) that ASIC’s payment of Shipton’s tax advice had been agreed as part of his original employment arrangements, but at a cost much lower than ultimately occurred.

The auditor-general, Grant Hehir said that the existence of tax advice payment to major consultancy KPMG had been appropriately declared, but that the question was whether it was ultimately consistent with the Remuneration Tribunal rules.

He said that if the payment had been around the original $9,000 estimate it would have been within those rules.

The committee was also told that the ANAO was uncertain why the ultimate bill rose to $60,000 and was broken up into a series of $25,000 procurement invoices and there was nothing to say how it grew from those three invoices up to the end-point.

The auditor-general suggested there had been an initial failure on the part of ASIC to take the situation seriously leading to him placing pressure on ASIC to deal with the issue.

Read more about:

AUTHOR

Recommended for you

sub-bgsidebar subscription

Never miss the latest news and developments in wealth management industry

MARKET INSIGHTS

So we are now underwriting criminal scams?...

2 months ago

Glad to see the back of you Steve. You made financial more expensive, not more affordable as you claim, and presided ...

2 months ago

Completely agree Peter. The definition of 'significant change is circumstances relevant to the scope of the advice' is s...

4 months 1 week ago

A Sydney financial adviser has been permanently banned from providing any financial services, with the regulator deriding his “lack of integrity, trustworthiness and prof...

3 weeks 2 days ago

Minister for Financial Services, Stephen Jones, has provided further information about the second tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes (DBFO) reforms....

2 weeks 1 day ago

One licensee has lost 27 advisers in the past week, now sitting at zero, according to the latest Wealth Data figures....

3 weeks 2 days ago

TOP PERFORMING FUNDS