KPMG, the tax dodgers’ mate, has no place in public policy debate

According to a recent report from consulting giant KPMG, superannuation should be added to paid parental leave (PPL) and the Commonwealth carer payment — all part of “a series of reports on policies to achieve greater gender equality”. It would cost around $1 billion a year.

Fair enough. The report has received some coverage, mainly in the super trade press, although The Australian linked it to a push within Labor by Emily’s List members to add super to PPL.

What’s interesting is that KPMG feels entitled to opine about how governments should increase spending, given its very long track record of working assiduously to undermine government revenue.

In 2005, KPMG admitted to criminal wrongdoing and paid more than US$450 million in fines for engaging “in a fraud that generated at least $11 billion in phony tax losses”, resulting in “the largest criminal tax case ever filed” in the United States. Six former partners and its former deputy chair faced criminal prosecution.

A Senate investigation concluded: “KPMG devoted substantial resources and maintained an extensive infrastructure to produce a continuing supply of generic tax products to sell to clients, using a process which pressured its tax professionals to generate new ideas, move them quickly through the development process, and approve, at times, illegal or potentially abusive tax shelters.”

In 2016, after the leak of the Panama Papers, the firm admitted it was putting high-wealth Canadians into tax shelters based in the Isle of Man. KPMG actively promoted the shelters to Canadian multimillionaires. In 2020, long-time KPMG Australia partner Chris Allenby was deregistered as a tax agent by the Tax Practitioners Board for his role in illegal tax schemes by his clients.

KPMG’s tax advice and audit functions have furnished entire academic papers examining its use of regulatory arbitrage. (KPMG’s consulting arm is also at the centre of allegations it overcharged defence — where KPMG appears to have a lock on huge numbers of consulting contracts.)

In short, KPMG comes to any debate about how governments spend money with zero credibility given its decades-long record of enabling tax avoidance.

Issuing reports on achieving greater gender equality is a distraction for a firm devoted to enabling and increasing inequality on a global scale — a bid for social licence where none should exist given the primary role of the firm in enabling corporate and high-wealth individual tax dodging.

The media plays a role in this. Every report of a KPMG study, or one by PwC or EY or Deloitte, that treats it as credible ignores the real business of the big four audit firms. Such reporting normalises these firms as legitimate participants in public debate, when they are malignant actors undermining civil society.

No coverage of anything issuing from the big four is complete without recounting their role in undermining the ability of governments to deliver for their communities.