Taxman chases Australia's Crocodile Dundee (Roundup)

Jul 4, 2008, 8:44 GMT

Sydney - Millionaire actor-director Paul Hogan, the former Sydney Harbour Bridge scaffold worker behind the 1986 hit comedy Crocodile Dundee, Friday challenged the Australian taxman to try and get more money from him.

Hogan, who lives in the United States, is suspected of using private trusts and offshore havens to avoid taxes.

'Come and get me you miserable bastards,' a combative Hogan told a local television station in a telephone interview from his California mansion.

'I'll give them every cent I made ... if they give me back every cent they made out of the movies. I'll swap with them,' he said.

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has enlisted the help of the US Internal Revenue Service to get a look at Hogan's US bank accounts.

Two years ago, Hogan sold his Australian properties and moved permanently to Santa Barbara, where he lives with his wife, Crocodile Dundee co-star Linda Kozlowski, who is a US citizen.

In 2006, when the ATO began its investigation into Hogan's financial affairs, it was reported that tens of millions of dollars in royalty payments from the Crocodile Dundee films were routed through complex offshore tax structures in Chile and the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean.

A spokesman for Hogan at the time said US financial advisers to the former prizefighter may not have understood Australia's 'complex and changing tax laws,' and that any failure to pay tax on income was an oversight rather than a deliberate act.

Crocodile Dundee, which earned 350 million US dollars at the box office, remains Australia's most successful film.

Hogan's Australian lawyer, David Rydon, told The Australian that the actor regarded the ATO's actions as an unlawful attempt to obtain irrelevant material.

'Mr Hogan is in the invidious position of not being able to publicly comment on any issues because of legislative constraints which may or may not prohibit him from public disclosure,' Rydon told the newspaper.