A senior tax accountant's misguided loyalty towards her client and manager led her to lie to the Australian Taxation Office and ruin her highly successful career, a judge has found.
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Jennifer Lee Nairne, 64, pleaded guilty to charges of dishonestly influencing a commonwealth official and using false documents to do so between February 17, 2009 and February 16, 2010.
Judge John Pickering in the NSW District Court on Thursday sentenced Nairne to a two-year intensive corrections order, saying her seniority and the inherent trust her profession must uphold were significant factors.
He accepted her unblemished record which included a character reference from former Prime Minister Keating, saying she had excellent prospects of rehabilitation.
The former senior accountant at KPMG was working at PKF Chartered Accountants & Business Advisers when she misrepresented the taxable income of one particular client she had worked with for years.
Nairne lied in letters and an audit interview with the ATO about a trust income that purportedly generated goodwill for her client.
She also gave them documents created retrospectively which she said were contemporaneous evidence required by the department.
Judge Pickering said the former senior partner was not being sentenced for setting up a tax minimisation scheme which is common practice.
He said Australians openly bragged about avoiding paying tax.
"It's almost a joke at times," he said.
Judge Pickering accepted there was no monetary benefit for Nairne as she sought to satisfy her client and please her manager, showing a fundamental poor judgement.
"I can see why she is popular with her clients. Very loyal, determined to do a good job by them," he said.
"But who would waste their life and career lying for a client?
"Whether you are a lawyer or account it does not seem worth it."
The judge said Nairne's misleading approach with the ATO was not overly complex, and backdating documents "is not really that sophisticated".
And he found Nairne had undergone extra punishment following an "exorbitant" amount of time to press charges.
"It took the federal authorities nearly 12 years to pursue this matter," adding that could be reduced however dates were interpreted.
He also said she suffered from earlier "significant misreporting" of her crimes.
Nairne was commended for volunteering more than 400 hours with Meals on Wheels, and sentenced to a further 150 hours of community service.
The ICO is due to expire on August 10, 2024.
Australian Associated Press
