Taxman invites all your suggestions

Treasury boss Ken Henry has hired a room in Melbourne' Jasper Hotel, next to Queen Victoria Market, to hear all-comers from 6 to 8pm.

"You may remember my conversation with a businessman 'Jim' of Jericho in central Queensland," he says in an message posted on the Henry Tax Review website.

"It drew my attention to some of the tax and transfer complexities ordinary Australians have to deal with in their everyday lives."

As Dr Henry later explained to the Press Club last year, the fabled Jim taught him that fencing wire could be treated in several different ways for tax purposes even though it was "just fencing wire".

The Treasury Secretary said the conversation helped persuade him that "the bar room conversations of practical people sometimes contain more wisdom than high-brow policy seminars".

The Jasper Hotel meeting on March23 will be followed by a meeting at the Geelong Conference Centre the following day, one of the only consultation meetings outside the capital cities.

"We want to approach issues from the perspectives of everyday citizens," Dr Henry says in the message.

The Henry Review is required to report by the end of the year. It will submit a separate report on the tax treatment of Australia's retirement incomes system at the end of this month.