Quote Originally Posted by echnidna View Post
I have no sympathy for peple who use artificial schemes to reduce their tax.
Well, its late so I won't go into too many details, but way back in 1992 I happened to have a federal treasurer captive for about 45 minutes. We had an engaging discussion on commonwealth corporations, tax, immigration. He advised me that Australian films would be a good investment given my tax status and love of the arts.

He went on to become Prime Minister, I went bankrupt about 7 years later. It seems that film investment managers were all shonks, and I was left holding the bag, including retrospective tax readjustments + interest + 100% penalties. I think I made 6,000, and it only cost me about $800,000 to do it! Fantastic.

Years later we "won" our suit against the Commonwealth Bank, but only got $45,000 after various fees, charges, lawyers, underwriters, blah blah.

My lesson: invest on the fundamental merits of the proposal. If the business case can't be made in one paragraph it's ########. In fact, just follow W. Buffet and get rich slowly. Or not at all; rich ain't all it's cracked up to be, although it is mostly better than being poor. Or so I'm told.

Greg