Back
~
1
min read
· Posted on
February 21, 2024

PwC is facing taxing times after 3 execs step down after tax leak

Australia's tax practitioners board has banned a PwC partner from practicing.

What's the key learning?

  • A PwC partner has been banned from practicing because of sharing confidential government tax plans with other staff at the firm, and as a result, the PwC CEO and two other execs have stepped down.
  • Relationships between client and adviser are built on trust, expertise... more trust - and once this trust is broken, it becomes incredibly difficult to recover from.
  • This tax leak highlights the strange and conflicted relationships that professional services firms often have with their broad range of clients.

👉 Background: PwC aka Price Waterhouse Cooper, is the second largest professional services firm in the world by revenue... and the largest in Australia. PwC provides services to a whole range of organisations around Australia.

👉 What happened: In fact, PwC received $537 million in federal government contracts during the past two years alone. But now, Australia's tax practitioners board has banned a PwC partner from practicing - all because of sharing confidential government tax plans with other staff at the firm.

👉 What else: As a result, the PwC CEO and two other execs have stepped down after being on an email chain with this confidential info. And this raises a whole lot of questions about conflicts of interest in the professional services space.

What's the key learning?

💡Relationships between client and adviser are built on trust, expertise... more trust. And once this trust is broken, it becomes incredibly difficult to recover from.

💡In particular though, this leak highlights the strange and conflicted relationships that professional services firms often have with their broad range of clients.

  • On one hand, these firms work for the government to help formulate tax laws.
  • On the other hand, the same people are often working with corporates and trying to help them pay as little tax as legally possible.

💡We don’t see the same law firm or investment bank working on two opposing sides of a merger and acquisitions so now, the government will do an inquiry into the billions spent with consultants... and, who knows what else they'll uncover?

Ready to win at money?

Sign up for Flux and join 100,000 members of the Flux family

A button to App StoreGoogle Play store button
Excellent  4.9 out of 5
Star rating
No items found.