Australians are getting a fairer tax clip from large multinational companies, with over $4 billion raised in assessments last financial year, according to evidence by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to the Senate Economics Committee yesterday.
The Turnbull Government welcomes Commissioner of Taxation, Chris Jordan’s evidence before the Committee that the ATO’s audits and reviews of well-known multinationals, as well as large Australian groups, raised over $4 billion in assessments in the last financial year. Nearly $3 billion of this amount has been levied on seven very large multinationals.
The Turnbull Government’s tough action to crack down on multinational tax avoidance has enabled this successful work by the ATO. If profit is earned in Australian then it will be taxed here.
The Government has resourced a new Tax Avoidance Taskforce of over 1,000 officers and introduced tough new laws like the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL), the Diverted Profits Tax and strengthened the general anti-avoidance powers.
In addition, the Turnbull Government has enhanced the ATO’s ability to stop multinationals profit shifting to low tax countries through strengthening the transfer pricing laws and sharing country-by-country reports of multinationals’ transfer pricing strategies with our tax partners.
By contrast, the Labor party and Bill Shorten opposed and voted against the MAAL in the Parliament.
The Commissioner told the Committee yesterday that part of the $4 billion extra tax he raised last year was $1 billion in assessments on e-commerce companies and that he has already collected $800 million cash on those assessments.
The Government’s coordinated plan to tackle profit shifting and avoidance of Australian tax law will keep paying dividends. The ATO expects that the MAAL alone will see sales now taxable in Australia of over $7 billion each year.
When taken into account with the ATO’s estimate that the outcome of the Chevron litigation will bring in more than $10 billion dollars of additional revenue over the next ten years through assessments of transfer pricing of related parties, Australians should have every confidence that their Government will take the necessary decisions and actions to ensure multinationals pay the taxes they rightly owe to the Australian people.
The Government commends Commissioner Jordan and the hard-working staff of the ATO for their efforts in implementing and policing our tough new multinational anti-avoidance laws.