Nexus - 0105 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Anemauve Modern Histor JOW OF AVUIVRALIC GAlay ne Mew Pas Pale A ° ou thought the Australia Card was \/ lf YF, dead? The first part of the Federal ZN Government's program to cut downon the cash economy is the shift to E.F.T. and EFT-POS (Electronic Fund Transfer at Point Of Sale). The Target retail chain has already upgraded its national network of sales terminals as a precursor to introducing scan- ning and electronic funds transfer equipment. | allowances. There have been mutterings from . Is this part of an international scheme to intro- | the Democratic and Liberal camps that they WORLD WILDE RNESS duce a global cashless economy? won't pass the legislation. The first of the Supersmart Cards is being The tax file number will be used to check CONGR ESS . : P F a NEXUS presents the following allegations trialled on 120 grocery shoppers in Tokyo by | tax returns, interest, share dividends and rent x F : i" a made by The Reaper, a weekly newsletter Toshiba and Visa International. It has acon- | payments. The Tax Office will be able to trace n . , 2 a ‘ gs ‘ ‘ from an Arizona Commodity Trading Advi- ventional integrated circuit but includes an | people who don't file tax returns. At present We think it be faristios internal lithium battery, acommand panel and | you must lodge a tax return if you have a tax chats ie a a liquid crystal display. filenumber, but itisn't yet compulsory to have Wrat would seem a perfectly innocent Japan Airlines, Daiwa Securities and the | a number. gathering last September was attended by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corpora- The Tax Office has already stepped upits | some very heavy fliers. The Fourth World tion (NTT) have pooled resources to develop | activities to match income with individuals. It_]| Wildemess Congress, hosted by the Findhom the supersmart card for home purchases of | exchanges information regularly with the | Group of Loveland, Colorado, was attended stocks and the reservation of airline tickets. Departnent of Social Security (DSS). A pilot | by global environmental groups such as the Visa has also struck up an agreeement | program has already matched information | World Wildlife Fund and Wilderness Society, with Soviet banks to introduce smart cards | with data from DSS and in February had | United Nations representatives and govern- containing computerised personal informa- | identified 102,000 potential discrepancies. ment bureaucrats. But multinational bankers tion for a small number of Moscow depart- The Tax Office has $700 millionincom- | comprised 10% of the congress, including ment stores. Under the plan shop assistants | puter re-equipment in its main office atthe | such notables as Baron Edmund D. won't give change for cash transactions. Deakin Centre in Canberra and other offices, | Rothschild, David Rockefeller and US Treas- There are almost 500 different types of | in anticipation of the tax-file numbering sys- ury Secretary James Baker. They did notcome credit and debit cards in operation in Australia | tem. This fait accompli has not been legally | to talk about the environment, but about land. at the moment. The Standards Association of | challenged by any political party. The purpose of the Congress was to set up Australia has issued a series of standards for Tax collections rose 16% in 1986-87 to | a World Conservation Bank (WCB). Accord- credit cards, including location of the mag- | $52.9 billion, $1.2 billion above Budget esti- ing toThe Reaper, WCB is designed to get the a, a and i pape : mates, multinational bankers off the hook with Third his makes it easier for the to introduce H World loans. Wilderness lands may be used as a universal smart card, which would easily Data Insecurity collateral forthe loans and then claimed in lieu evolve into a de facto ID card. A radical scheme being trialled by the Tax | of debt payment. The land would be put into a Tax Fil es Office in South Australia and the Northern | trust, called the World Wilderness Land In- Territory allows 80,000 people to lodge their | ventory Trust, owned and operated by the The government's other major initiative is | tax returns by telephone. If successful, the | U.N., and then transferred to the WCB. Thus the integrated tax file system - integrated with | scheme wil! be applied nationally in the next | Brazil, which can’t repay its loan to the Chase bank accounts, social security, government | 5to 10years. Thesystem will be available first] Manhattan Bank, could forfeit sovereignty of departments, Medicare, etc. to tax agents, then individual taxpayers. The | the Amazon basin to the WCB. The Government expects to legislate this | information is fed into Tax Department com- It is alleged that 30% of the Earth’s land year on a Cash Transactions Bill aimed at | puters viamodems over opentelephone lines. | surface will come under multinational control preventing the laundering of money through The Deakin Centre has been sending | by this means. Many nations face enormous false bank accounts. It will require all banksto | unscrambled tax file data to its State offices. | debt problems - including the US, the USSR, report cash transactions over $10,000. Computer bulletin boards have beencrammed | Canada and Australia. At the end of 1987, The Treasurer, Mr Keating, hopes to in- | with enquiries by skilled professionals with | 60% of our exports were required for debt troduce legislation to set up the tax filesystem | access to upper-level networks who are keen | servicing. Australia’s World Heritage areas toward the end of this year, even though work | to find out more about the data. This may | will go into the WCB. on tax files is well advanced. The legislation | prompt the Tax Office to call for its encoding, The WCB is another step towards a single will require people to quote their tax file | diverting attention from the ethics of the tax | world currency which world bankers see as number when they make major financial | file system itself. The security of the Tax | the only solution to the instability in the ex- transactions, open a bank account, apply fora | Department's databases was a key issue last } changerates caused by differentnational rates job or claim welfare benefits or education | year in the Government's ID card proposal. | of inflation. A-EG. NEXUS New Times Five - Winter 1988 JOW OF AVUIVRALC Gea FLIES PAZ 2A@ WEL? Tax Files Data Insecurity