Lawyers are ‘misusing’ privilege in tax cases and the ATO wants it to stop<\/a><\/p>\nTax commissioner Chris Jordan is concerned some lawyers are using legal professional privilege to “conceal contrived tax arrangements”.<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey’s storied career stretches decades.<\/p>\n
He had been a professional operatic tenor who toured with the Ten Tenors. As an executive producer and artistic director, the group “achieved gold and platinum records in Australia and abroad”, his work profile stated. That included the 2006 album Tenology.<\/p>\n
But he detailed, in the Happy Lawyer podcast, a health struggle during his music career and a desire for a different job. He also said his time in show business did not leave him “rolling in dough”.<\/p>\n
He became a lawyer, taking the rare step of quickly becoming a barrister in 2010. Since then, he’s been named in top listings from Doyle’s Guide to the Australian Financial Review in sectors from construction to insolvency law.<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey has represented a top scientist at the forensic DNA testing commission of inquiry, appeared for a victim’s family at the Dreamworld ride tragedy coroner’s inquest, and acted for liquidators in an action involving Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel.<\/p>\n
Loading…<\/p>\n
He writes graceful pieces on issues from dementia to manhood and the need for politicians to act with gravitas, but in the past few weeks has taken down his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n
He only last November became a Kings Counsel, known as taking silk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bar Association of Queensland describes the KC designation as going to only 10 per cent of practising barristers and indicates their “standing and achievements justify an expectation \u2026 they can provide outstanding services as advocates and advisers, to the good of the administration of justice”.<\/p>\n
ATO files lawsuit<\/p>\n
In January this year, the tax office filed its lawsuit alleging Mr Hickey had been hit with penalty interest charges for income tax bills dating from 2013 to 2021. Notices for the tax bills were sent annually, the document states.<\/p>\n
“The defendant failed to pay income tax for the relevant periods on or before the relevant due dates,” a statement of claim said.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit alleged that interest was still accruing in January this year. For instance, the tax bill sent in 2014 of $151,404.70 had an accumulated interest charge of $32,064.34.<\/p>\n
At some stage \u2014 the timing is unclear \u2014 the principal on many year’s income tax bills was paid. Still, in January when the lawsuit was initially filed, chunks of principal tax assessments from 2020 and 2021 allegedly remained outstanding.<\/p>\n
But on top of outstanding income tax and penalties of about $500,000, the lawsuit alleged another $2 million related to business activities and penalty interest was owed.<\/p>\n
![\"Signs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/3daeaa6cbf4b1cd680ec7de168507113\")
<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey was served with legal papers earlier this year. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n
Mr Hickey was even personally served with legal papers at his rented home in a well-off Brisbane suburb, at 10:30am one Saturday in February, the court documents state.<\/p>\n
By this November, no defence had been filed. A tax office compliance officer wrote that $56,475.32 had been repaid or credited against Mr Hickey’s bill since March this year.<\/p>\n
But charges outstanding were still increasing and by November, the amount sought and entered for a default judgment hit $2.7 million.<\/p>\n
A serious next step in some debt recovery situations is to sue for bankruptcy in the Federal Court \u2014 with a financial judgment in another court used as proof.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But that step has not been taken in Mr Hickey’s situation, and debt deals can be arranged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew Hickey is an elite Kings Counsel barrister \u2014a thoughtful orator who works on some of Queensland’s most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,121548,17169,651,182990,134,182989,182988,38017,23020,182987,94,701,182991],"class_list":["post-325982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-financial-review","tag-australian-tax-office","tag-brisbane","tag-doyles-guide","tag-entertainment","tag-happy-lawyer-podcast","tag-kings-counsel","tag-lawyer","tag-legal","tag-matthew-hickey","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-ten-tenors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}