Taxpayers are bearing the cost of government failure to overhaul the tax system for modern needs.
The tendency to tweak the tax system in one area has typically triggered problems elsewhere in the system, a former tax office commissioner says.
"At best, we see politicians fiddling around the edges and not recognising that real reform means reform of the system - all of it - not just some part," Andrew Mills said at the Tax Summit in Sydney.
He pointed to punitively high effective marginal tax rates imposed on second-income earners that deferred some from working more days as an example of taxation failure.
Mr Mills said he wanted to see a real and permanent solution to reforming the tax system in the Albanese government's first budget, to be delivered on Tuesday, but he had been disappointed too many times in the past to believe it would happen.
Despite the treasurer calling for a national conversation about how to repair the budget and find ways to fund fast-growing spending areas, multinational tax avoidance is the only type of tax reform officially on the table.
The government has repeatedly ruled out calls to rejig the stage three tax cuts - a change to income tax brackets that will see medium- and high-income earners pay less tax - that are due to come into force in 2024.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has also ruled out changes to superannuation tax concessions in the upcoming budget.
BDO tax expert Mark Molesworth said there would likely be more announcements about multinational taxation in the budget.
So far, the government has called for consultation on its multinational tax agenda and promised to crack down on firms improperly using intellectual property to shift profits to tax havens.
Assistant minister Andrew Leigh said the government would introduce a rule to stop large multinationals claiming tax deductions relating to patents, trademarks, logos and brands paid to low- or no-tax jurisdictions.
At the moment, big companies are able to dodge tax payments by moving intellectual property to a country without a company tax rate, charge a fee for the use of that IP and deduct the fee from their corporate tax bills.
"Voila: what was once a taxable profit has now disappeared," Dr Leigh said.
Mr Molesworth expects to see a few other changes to multinational tax, including a proposal to publish companies' country-by-country reporting information.
While this would make the task of monitoring multinational tax avoidance easier, he said it would be difficult to strike a balance between revealing too much data - jeopardising commercially sensitive information - or too little, which would make the exercise pointless.
