PwC has disgraced itself down under
The firm’s employees helped multinationals dodge taxes in Australia
ANTHONY ALBANESE, Australia’s prime minister, has called it “completely unacceptable”. Jim Chalmers, his treasurer, is “furious”. The object of their ire is PwC. The professional-services giant is in hot water over allegations that, after helping the government design a new system to make foreign multinational firms pay more tax, it used its inside knowledge to help global clients circumvent those same measures.
The scandal centres on Peter-John Collins, a former PwC partner who counselled the government on the tax rules between 2013 and 2015 and then leaked details of the work to at least 53 fellow partners in Australia and abroad. The Australian Tax Office, suspicious of the speed with which multinationals adapted, raised the matter in 2018 with the Australian Federal Police, and in 2020 with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB), an accreditation body.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Aussie rule-bending”
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