The giant Gorgon LNG project is set to deliver its partners more than $60 billion in tax-free profits over its lifetime, leading to an Australian Taxation Office investigation, according to The Australian Financial Review.
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But the documents protected the names of the companies involved.
“It might suit [Dastyari’s] political purposes to go and scream the names of these particular companies that he’s after but it actually doesn’t suit Australia’s purposes”, Frydenberg said on Monday.
“Any information which could identify individual companies has been blocked out”, Ward told the Seven Network’s Sunday Night program.
“The report hasn’t been released, although I note that some media outlets have it, which is an extraordinary breach of Senate rules”, Hockey told ABC Radio on Monday.
On Saturday, Senator Dastyari said: “There is a major flaw in our tax system that is enabling some of the biggest companies in the world to evade billions in tax that should be paid in Australia”.
The Senate Standing Committee on Economics will this week write to Uber and room-sharing service Airbnb inviting them to make a written submission to the inquiry into the use of offshore tax havens by multinational companies.
Hockey said “some of the stereotypes are wrong” when it comes to public sentiment about multinationals, and that many are the top tax payers in the country.
Senator Dastyari, who chaired the inquiry, argued there was a thirst for information within the community about what companies were up to.
We don’t yet know if more tax would be collected, but Dastyari insisted the “more public disclosure, the more pressure that’s brought upon these companies, the better the policy outcome”.
Sen Xenophon said he could not comment on the details, but said the committee was recommending changes that could help crackdown on corporate tax avoiders.
He later told reporters that Dastyari “undermines credibility by releasing a report that his own Senate committee hasn’t signed off on”.
Senator Dastyari denied speaking specifically about the unreleased report’s recommendations, insisting what he said were his personal views.
In the next 24 hours, we’re going to find out if Apple and Google will be forced to declare how much tax they pay in Australia annually, with the Australian Senate committee pushing in new recommendations.
“The ATO is going after these companies”.
One of the report’s 18 recommendations will suggest that even companies with overseas headquarters should disclose their revenue, tax paid and deductions used in Australia, the Herald said.
The report estimated Singapore-based SingTel had an average annual foregone tax figure in Australia of AU$713 million, alleging the telco averaged a tax paid amount of AU$284 million, off the back of the AU$3.3 billion average pre-tax profit.
In April, executives from Apple, Google, and Microsoft confirmed they were being investigated by the ATO as part of the Senate’s tax avoidance inquiry.
“Tax minimisation is not victimless”, he said.
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He also called on the coalition government to do more to counter corporate tax avoidance.
