![Copyright laws affect many facets of our lives.](/web/20161214055224im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/1/0/h/m/7/3/image.related.wideLandscape.460x259.gtau3u.png/1481691961414.jpg)
The copyright protection racket has to come to an end
Imagine a land in which everything was outlawed, except for the things that were specifically allowed. Things would more-or-less work, until you tried something new.
Imagine a land in which everything was outlawed, except for the things that were specifically allowed. Things would more-or-less work, until you tried something new.
The Turnbull government is to consider a ban on the $100 note and a crackdown on all but small cash payments as part of an assault on the cash economy to be unveiled in Monday's mid-year budget update.
A measure of Australia's consumer sentiment slipped to an eight-month low in December after disappointing data on the domestic economy shook confidence in the outlook for the year ahead.
The year will end with 15 boards in the ASX 200 with no women on it.
By 2019-20, residents in NSW will pay $23.7 billion in GST and get back just $17.8 billion.
There's a big downside to NSW's economic success.
Business conditions have fallen to their lowest level in 19 months and consumer confidence has plunged.
Australia does not need a taxpayer bill of rights, a review has found, but the Tax Office must take greater steps to educate the public about their rights and apologise when it makes errors.
Australia may have tougher laws aimed at recouping more tax from multinationals, but that won't stop the incoming US President Donald Trump to tell us to "get stuffed" in the fight for more revenue, a KPMG tax expert says.
Imagine the task of building a city the size of Canberra every year, for the rest of this century. Or, how about creating a new city the population of Melbourne every decade?
Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen is right: One of the Abbott-Turnbull government's various acts of economic vandalism is its politicisation of the once-proud federal Treasury.
GDP might well be the least bad of all the flawed ways in which we can measure the health of our economy. But it's far from perfect, especially if you're aiming to capture the impact of the economy on people.
A showdown between the Australian Taxation Office and the nation's largest companies including Chevron, Crown and BHP Billiton is looming as the tax man hit seven large companies with tax bills amounting to $2 billion in revenue.
What would economic race-calling be without its little excitements? As you may possibly have heard, this week's news is that the economy has contracted - shrunk, gone backwards - by 0.5 per cent.
Fairfax Media spoke to business owners across five industries to find out who the year's economic winners and losers have been.
More than $4 billion in Australian tax is being shifted by Australian-based multinationals into the world's 15 worst corporate "tax havens" each year, Oxfam says.
Labor has questioned the bona fides of a report apparently commissioned by the Treasury that plays down the role of big government spending in helping Australia survive global financial crisis.
Treasurer Morrison labelled this week's surprisingly low September quarter GDP number as a "wake-up call". What he didn't say is that it's a call that's been ringing for three years.
By turning his back on migrants is counter to the trends of immigration that actually realised his election mantra of "making America great again."
A surprise blow-out in the October trade deficit has raised questions about the predicted rebound in economic growth, following the third-quarter contraction.
If you thought that the European Union coming down hard on tech-giant Apple was the end of secret tax deals, you're wrong.
"He effectively told her her role on the project was just to be an ornament."
The Treasury and the Reserve Bank are likely to 'look through' the reported numbers to focus on what's happening beneath them.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has branded the dramatic end to five continuous years of economic growth "not just a reminder, not just a wake-up call, but a demand to support economic policies that drive investment and jobs".
Companies see Donald Trump as both the biggest upside and downside risk to global growth in 2017.
Brace for the first quarter of negative economic growth in five years, and only the fourth in Australia's enviable run of 100 quarters without a recession.
Financial market analysts believe the economy went backwards immediately after the July election, ending 5 years of continuous growth and calling into question the government's repeated promise to "deliver jobs and growth".
Last week in front of 1400 people at a Fairfax Media subscriber event I was outed as a "pathological optimist" by an anonymous reader, who wanted to know how I got that way.
Women and men are not always supported in their desire for work flexibility. There's stigmas, and much resistance.
The RBA kept its cash rate on hold in the lead-up to Christmas, playing down concerns over sliding business investment and a likely collapse in economic growth to keep the rate at 1.5 per cent.
Not all capital is created equal.
Home delivered booze is a threat the big players haven't quite yet caught up with.
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