Paul Hogan vows to fight Australian tax office [Archive]

wildcard

2nd September 2010, 10:28 AM

Ironically, the guy they based the Crocodile Dundee character on was killed in a shoot out with the police not too far back.

Paul Hogan vows to fight Australian tax office

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100901/people_nm/us_hogan%3B_ylt%3DApwuJvrb47K2SvPLTO1SJgZzfNdF

By Pauline Askin Pauline Askin â€“ Wed Sep 1, 4:16 am ET

SYDNEY (Reuters) â€“ Actor Paul Hogan, star of the "Crocodile Dundee" movies, has vowed to continue fighting the Australian tax office which has barred him from leaving Australia until he pays a massive bill, saying he's victim of a witch hunt.

Hogan, 70, was served with a departure prohibition order 10 days ago while in Australia to attend his 101-year-old mother's funeral which has prevented him from leaving to return to Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and son.

The Australian Tax Office refused to comment on reports of seeking tax on A$38 million ($34 million) of allegedly undeclared income from Hogan, saying it cannot give details of individual taxpayers.

But the actor went public in the Australian media this week to put forward his side in his five-year row with the tax office, saying he had done nothing wrong and the tax office was on a witch hunt for a high-profile case.

"I can't pay 10 percent of what they're asking.... bugger 'em!" the actor told Australian television Nine Network's "A Current Affair" program broadcast late Tuesday.

"If I was a tax evader, which I'm not, I must be the dumbest one in the world to keep coming back here instead of fleeing to a tax haven ... I know they're absolutely desperate to nail some high-profile character with money to justify the expense to the taxpayer."

Hogan, who was once a painter on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is under investigation as part of Australia's biggest probe into offshore tax evasion, Operation Wickenby.

The operation is budgeted to cost at least $300 million.

The tax office has claimed he put tens of millions of dollars in film royalties in offshore tax havens, a claim that he has denied. He has never been charged with tax evasion.

A popular Australian TV comedian, Hogan hit international fame as Mick "Crocodile" Dundee in the 1986 film "Crocodile Dundee" which went on to become Australia's most successful film ever and won Hogan a Golden Globe for best actor.

Two sequels followed and Hogan married his Dundee co-star Linda Kozlowski which was his second marriage.

Hogan has repeatedly said that if anything he has paid too much tax in Australia.

"I've paid more than a wise businessman would have," he said. "I don't have and never had the money people think I got ... and it's none of their business," he added.

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

wildcard

3rd September 2010, 09:34 AM

That was quick:
(http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/paul-hogan-free-to-return-to-the-us-as-the-heavy-hand-of-the-tax-office-relents/story-e6frg6nf-1225914037236 [link)

Paul Hogan free to return to the US as the heavy hand of the tax office relents

PAUL Hogan is free to leave Australia after striking a deal with the tax office that included the lifting of his Departure Prohibition Order.

The veteran actor agreed to provide a "security" that would allow him to return to the US and reunite with his family, wife Linda Kozlowski and son Chance.

As Hogan makes good his departure, he knows the stakes have never been higher in the

fight to beat the authorities that form Project Wickenby, the nation's $300 million tax fraud investigation.

When banned from leaving Australia two weeks ago, on the eve of his mother's funeral, Hogan was reminded just how far the Australian Taxation Office was prepared to go in its pursuit of him.

Today, The Weekend Australian can reveal the stakes have been high from day one, and that the Wickenby forces - the Australian Federal Police, the ATO and the secretive Australian Crime Commission - have always been heavy-handed in the pursuit of their quarry.

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Hogan's financial adviser, Tony Stewart, hasn't forgotten the cold June morning in 2005 when his Sydney home was raided at the crack of dawn. His wife answered the door to face 10 armed federal police officers.

She asked them to wait while she woke her sleeping children. As she turned her back to walk upstairs, the police overtook her, racing through the house in their effort to uncover documents linked to Stewart's famous clients, Hogan and his business and comedy partner John Cornell.

Stewart, whose daughter was woken by a police officer shining a torch in her face and demanding she get out of bed, has never before spoken about the events of June 9, 2005, which first signalled that Hogan and Cornell were in Wickenby's sights.

Stewart, who sat in on an interview between The Weekend Australian and Hogan this week, still can't believe the tax office began its investigation in such a manner.

"If you want to know how all this started, that's how it started," Stewart said of the dawn raid.

"From day one, they have been the aggressors and we have been on the back foot; we haven't been able to say anything."

That changed two weeks ago when the investigation, which still continues, took an extraordinary turn. Hogan, who has flown back and forth between his home in the US and Australia at least a dozen times since he discovered he was under investigation, was suddenly hit with a Departure Prohibition Order by the tax office.

Hogan had arrived in Sydney to attend the funeral of his mother, Florence, and had filled in his daughter's address on his customs card at the airport. He had only planned to stay a few days, but what he didn't know was that his movements were being tracked by the authorities and his entry into Sydney airport had triggered an alert that led to tax officers arriving at his daughter's house several hours later armed with the punitive order.

The order effectively kept Hogan, who has not been charged with any offence, a prisoner in Australia, unable to leave until yesterday when, according to Hogan's lawyer Andrew Robinson, "a cordial and co-operative meeting" led to a resolution that would see Hogan able to return to the US in return for pledging an unknown amount in security.

The DPO was a tactic that bewildered Hogan and his camp. Once it became known publicly, it was a story that was picked up worldwide. It angered and stunned the Australian actor.

"I'm not devastated - I don't do devastation," Hogan said this week. "But I am staggered by the grotesqueness of this."

The DPO was a further blow to the actor, who says he has been "smeared" as a tax dodger. He still remembers seeing his name being splashed across the front pages and as the lead items in the news in 2006, when he was identified as the number one target of Operation Wickenby.

Then treasurer Peter Costello had earlier pledged $300 million for the Wickenby investigation, and 350 extra investigators were appointed in a push to track down tax cheats.

So how had it come to this? Hogan on the front page as public enemy number one, when 20 years earlier he was being courted by the then tourism minister John Brown to do a series of ads promoting Australia as a tourist destination. Hogan was so proud to be an Australian he offered to do the ads free of charge, even though he was earning million dollar-plus pay packets in advertising campaigns for Foster's and Winfield and could have demanded - and received - a multi-million-dollar cheque for the campaign.

Brown told Hogan he had to be paid something so they agreed on a small retainer. It was in the range of $100,000, but out of this, Hogan spent about half on his expenses, according to those in Hogan's camp. The remainder of the money went to the Variety Club, a children's charity Hogan worked with at the time. For their efforts, Hogan and Brown went on to become joint Australians of the Year in 1986.

The ads put Australia on the map, and 25 years on, Hogan's famous line - "So come and say G'Day. I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you" - has become part of the national lexicon.

It's almost as famous as the "That's not a knife . . . that's a knife" line from Crocodile Dundee.

It was that 1986 movie that propelled Hogan to international stardom and into the world of the super rich.

The movie also marked the beginings of his troubles with the tax office. It was the flow of royalties from the Crocodile Dundee movies that are the focus of the current Wickenby probe.

The year 1986 is when Hogan is accused of planning tax evasion on a massive scale.

According to Hogan's accountant at the time, John Gibb, the actor's "state of mind" was to set up offshore companies to avoid paying tax.

It was this piece of evidence from Gibb that allowed the tax office to issue massive tax bills against him dating back to 1986. Gibb warned Hogan the planned offshore structure was not legal, according to a statement made by Gibb last December, which emerged last week as a central plank of the Wickenby case.

But as The Australian uncovered, that's not all Gibb told authorities. He also mentioned - in a July 2009 interview with authorities - that the advice of a top QC had been received that gave the green light to the structure. The QC is believed to be Graham Hill, widely regarded as Australia's best tax lawyer in the 1980s, who went on to become a Federal Court judge. That part of Gibb's evidence was not included in the December statement.

This changes in many ways the case against Hogan and Cornell and it is yet to be explained how the authorities are relying on only one part of what Gibb told them. A court case scheduled for November might shed more light on the issue.

Hogan was victorious yesterday, but the tax office is no easy adversary. There are still tax bills climbing toward $150m that have yet to be resolved, and Hogan still maintains his innocence.