Firms accused of tax dodges
The Federal Government is under pressure to target Australian companies that are using a who's who of international tax havens to avoid paying their share of tax.
Despite the Government focusing on multinational firms and their tax minimisation strategies, a report suggests Australia has its own problems, with some of the nation's biggest firms paying less than 10� in the dollar in tax.
Last week, the G20, which is chaired by Australia this year, vowed to tackle tax evasion and avoidance by multinationals, revealing a series of plans including a requirement that companies reveal exactly where they make profits and how much tax they pay in individual nations.
Much of the focus was on multinational firms, especially IT giants such as Google and Apple.
But a report by the Tax Justice Network and the United Voice union shows companies on the ASX200 have created thousands of subsidiary firms that are based in known tax havens.
According to the network, 72 of the top 200 listed firms are using 269 subsidiaries in Singapore and 55 are using subsidiaries based in Hong Kong.
Other well known tax havens used by big firms include the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland.
The network estimated at least $80 billion in tax revenue between 2004 and last year had been lost because of the use of the tax havens.
Twenty-First Century Fox, which for the period covered by the report includes News Corporation, has 117 subsidiaries, including 25 in the Virgin Islands and 19 in Mauritius.
Company chairman Rupert Murdoch used Twitter to defend his company's tax arrangements.
"NO tax avoidance by News, Fox or any Murdochs in Australia. Courts ruled, so move on!" he tweeted.
Shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said while the Government had talked tough about multinational tax evasion it had clearly done very little at home. He said the Government's refusal to back corporate tax changes introduced by Labor last year showed it was not prepared to act.
The Greens plan to start a Senate hearing into corporate tax evasion this week.
But Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Australia's tax avoidance laws were among the world's most stringent.
