Laws that force wealthy owners of private businesses to divulge their business income and how much tax they paid will do nothing to bring in revenue, but instead are a gross invasion of privacy, advisers say.
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Tax advisers to wealthy Australians say most of their clients are European immigrant families who came to this country with little, and have built up their wealth but are not avoiding tax.
"They don't spend big and they don't live it up big," says adviser to Australia's richest families, Mark Leibler, who runs law firm Arnold Block Leibler.
He is among a raft of tax advisers that say the tax laws should be scrapped, or at the very least amended to take out private companies.
As Fairfax Media reported on Friday, the Abbott government is considering changing tax disclosure laws after complaints by private business owners that they could be kidnapped and held at ransom when people realise how wealthy they are from their published tax information.
As the laws stand, about 1600 public and private companies' taxable income, total income and tax paid will published publicly on the Tax Office website from July.
Bernard Marin, founding director of Melbourne-based firm Marin Accountants, whichadvises some of Melbourne's wealthiest families, said his private clients were mainly immigrants.
"These are European families, typically ones that came to Australia after the [Second World] War, in the 1950s and built up their businesses to have financial security," Mr Marin said. "Some are property developers, some are retailers, and yes they have built up substantial wealth but that doesn't make them tax dodgers."
Mr Marin said his clients feared for their safety and said the disclosure laws were a "gross invasion of their privacy". His clients agreed that multinationals such as Apple and Google needed to pay more tax but pointed out that these laws would not fix that.
The laws will not affect American technology companies such as Apple and Google, which have copped most of the criticism against multinationals that profit shift because they are headquartered outside Australia.
Mr Leibler said while his clients were not just immigrants, they were typically families with more than $15 million in wealth who, until now, had "flown under the radar" in terms of their fortunes being paraded on rich lists and "want it to stay that way".
Some wealthy people do not disclose their financial information or make it hard to find.
Mr Leibler did not name individual clients he advised but said: "There's a pretty universal feeling these [the tax laws] is an invasion of their privacy and in many cases could potentially compromise people's personal safety."
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has described the tax disclosure laws, which the Coalition voted against when the former Labor government introduced them, as "ill-thought-out" and Treasurer Joe Hockey has previously said he has "deep concerns".
But Labor assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said the laws needed to stay. "Labor legislated for better tax transparency because there is a real need to put some hard facts about what companies pay into the public domain," he said.
"These transparency laws only apply to companies with revenue greater than $100 million so the vast majority of Australian companies will not be affected by it," Mr Leigh said.
