ATO sues Laneway Festival boss Jerome Borazio for $960k tax, super debt

The ATO is suing the co-founder of a popular Aussie music festival for almost $960,000 in unpaid superannuation and tax.

St. Jerome's Laneway Festival, pictured here is the 2019 Sydney event. Picture: Instagram

The Australian Taxation Office is pursuing the co-founder of the popular St Jerome’s Laneway Festival for almost $930,000 in superannuation and tax owed by companies that were part of his entertainment empire.

In a Victorian County Court statement of claim filed last week, the ATO claims that for more than a decade some of Jerome Borazio’s companies have failed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in superannuation owed to employees and failed to pass on to the government hundreds of thousands more in tax deducted from workers’ pay packets.

It is seeking to hold Mr Borazio personally liable for the money, owed by four now-defunct companies, plus interest.

Court documents show that employees of just one company, Rancho Notorious, which was the licensee of Mr Borazio’s successful Melbourne bar 1000 Pound Bend, are owed more than $220,000 in allegedly unpaid super since 2012.

The same company, which may also have been involved with other venues, also owes almost $440,000 in tax it collected on behalf of employees but allegedly failed to pass on to the ATO since 2011.

The crowd at the 2020 St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Melbourne. Picture: Martin Philbey

Tax law allows the ATO to hold company directors personally liable for debts run up by companies they control.

As a result Mr Borazio owes a total of more than $660,000 on behalf of Rancho Notorious, the ATO claims.

It claims the bar tsar also owes almost $100,000 related to another company where he was a director, Back Of Bend, plus almost $60,000 in relation to a company named 6 Hours Of Power and more than $107,000 in relation to a company named Nice & Easy.

Jerome Borazio outside court in 2016. Picture: Ian Currie

All of the companies named in the lawsuit have been deregistered.

Mr Borazio said he hadn’t been served with the ATO lawsuit.

“None of these companies are related to the festival,” he said.

Mr Borazio is a veteran of Melbourne’s hospitality scene who parlayed the popularity of his namesake laneway bar, St Jerome’s, into a national festival that next year is set to tour six cities with UK grime rapper Stormzy as headline act.

The festival returned in February this year after two years off due to Covid and featured acts including Los Angeles pop-rock group Haim and singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers.

Haim on stage at Glastonbury in 2017. Picture: AFP

Previous headliners include Lorde and Florence & The Machine.

It began in 2005 as a festival in Caledonian Ln, outside St Jerome’s, before expanding to Sydney the following year.

St Jerome’s was joined by a sister bar, S**t Town, run out of the stairwell next door without a liquor licence, until the building was demolished in 2009 as part of the redevelopment of the area into shopping malls.

In 2016, another of his companies was fined $40,000 after pleading guilty to food safety charges related to rodents and filth in the kitchen of bar Sister Bella.

Mr Borazio and a llama. Picture: Facebook

Mr Borazio has moved from Melbourne to the Mornington Peninsula, where he and his partner live on a property with llamas, camels and a Shetland Pony.

He is behind seaside pub and music venue Haba, at Rye on the Mornington Peninsula, which opened in late 2021.

Corporate documents show he is not a director of the venue’s licensee, Rockaway Beach, but owns half the company.

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