Colin
In a living room in Queensland, Australia, a woman sits down in front of a camera.
“Good morning everybody – don’t mind me, I’m just finishing my brekkie,” she said.
The video is being live-streamed to a Facebook group with more than 4,000 members.
It is a group for people seeking “spiritual” or sovereign financial advice, and members post in the chat to ask the guru her thoughts on paying income tax and lodging a return come tax season.
The woman’s message is clear in the caption of the video: “Why you shouldn’t lodge your taxes.”
Smiling down the barrel of the camera, she offers her advice:
“I do always say this one thing: do nothing. Don’t do anything,” the woman said.
“No-one has ever been prosecuted for not lodging.”
A rising movement
This Facebook group is part of a growing phenomenon that has emerged in the past few years and is an offshoot of the more well-known sovereign citizen movement.
The sovereign citizen movement rejects the legitimacy of the government. Its fast-growing popularity has had authorities scrambling to get a handle on how far its tentacles have reached.
This Facebook group has raised particular concerns about its impact on financial spaces, with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) voicing its concerns about how it could affect Australian public life.
“Operating outside the tax and regulatory systems is not a victimless crime, and can have serious impacts,” a spokeswoman said.
“‘Sovereign citizen’-type claims promoted by some that somehow you can opt out of the tax system, or that the ATO does not have legal standing, have been repeatedly debunked, and are likely to lead to significant penalties,” a spokeswoman said.
Experts say the alarm bells are ringing for government authorities as these kinds of groups continue to gain popularity.
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WHAT IS FINANCIAL SOVEREIGNTY?
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IS THIS LEGAL?
How is this spreading?
In 2022 and 2023, seminars that blended spirituality, sovereign citizenship and finance cropped up in places such as Melbourne, Perth and the Gold Coast.
One of the people who attended was West Australian man Steve Oxby.
Mr Oxby — by all accounts a successful, intelligent career man in his 50s who always followed his tax obligations — attended one of these seminars for two days in 2019.
While there, he said he learnt about “historical and constitutional law”.
“The seminar explained that taxation is not compulsory and is supposed to be voluntary,” Mr Oxby told the ATO in a letter in 2020.
“One key point raised in the seminar is that in order for the living man to perform work to generate an income, he must first be sustained,” he wrote.
This was his justification for claiming $70,000 in deductions for his rent, house and health insurance, clothing, home and car maintenance, food, phone bills and recreational activities for an entire year all on his tax return.
Administrative Appeals Tribunal senior member Michelle Evans-Bonner was scathing of his argument.
“I pause here to observe that this theory amounts to no more than a groundless and illogical fringe theory that has no foundation in Australian law,” she said.
“Unfortunately, Mr Oxby was persuaded by this theory during the seminar, which, I infer from his evidence, was presented in a persuasive and charismatic manner.”
He was ultimately fined $14,000.
And Mr Oxby is not the only Australian who has turned to financial sovereignty movements as a way to ease cost-of-living stress.
What’s the appeal?
Stephen Young, who has worked in the area of pseudo-law for years and examined its impact on the legal system, said there was no one “type” of person who fell into these types of movements.
“I’ve seen civil law lawyers get sucked into it,” he said.
“If there’s a grain of truth in there, it pulls you in.
“If you start to doubt the institutions, if you start to doubt common sense, it’s really easy to be persuaded by things that aren’t common sense.
“I think that’s how accountants and lawyers get sucked into this. It’s not because they’re not literate, it’s not because they’re not smart, it’s just because there’s reasons to question a system that doesn’t work perfectly for everyone.”
Dr Young said it was especially important to understand people who became involved in these movements were not necessarily bad-faith actors.
“I think what makes people susceptible is any type of stress in their life, if it’s financial or familial,” he said.
“People might be looking for a way to solve this, and they might be looking for an easy legal answer when there is none.”
What’s being done?
One group on social media promoting financial sovereignty has upwards of 4,000 members.
