Assistant Treasurer Senator Nick Sherry has appointed five law firms to the Tax Design Advisory Panel, mandated with delivering on the Rudd Government's commitment to enhanced consultation with the business community in the development and design of new tax laws.

 Clayton Utz, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, DLA Phillips Fox, Greenwoods & Freehills and Hall & Wilcox will join the 13-member panel that also includes five accounting firms, two economic research and modelling houses and one legal academic and research organisation.

“This is a major enhancement to the design of tax policy, formalising industry consultation as a vital early ingredient in the tax design process,” Sherry said. “With the Panel now in place, important tax legislation will be developed by teams involving Treasury, the Australian Tax Office and the private sector, as represented by the panel members.”

The Tax Design Advisory Panel will be engaged by Treasury through a case-by-case process in which the whole panel, or a subset of the panel, is approached for a particular task. Panel members will nominate personnel they believe are best suited for the task and Treasury will select one or more experts. Where a known expert on a particular topic is available through one panel member, the Treasury can approach just that organisation.

Member organisations that make up the panel were selected by public tender, with the 13 successful appointees to the Tax Design Advisory Panel being:

Related stories:

Clayton Utz "discounted heavily" for energy work

Kensington Swan, DLA Philips Fox partners to set standards for NZ financial advisers