Report: Multinational Tax Avoidance Cost Australia $5bn in One Year

Sydney-A new report by Oxfam said Australia’s federal government lost an estimated 5 billion US dollars in revenue in 2014 as a consequence of tax avoidance by multinational corporations with Australian operations.

The non-governmental organization said in its report that investments from Australian-based big companies in tax havens globally grew from an estimated 56.4 billion US dollars in 2009 to 79.1 billion US dollars in 2014.

“The Oxfam report, for the first time, puts dollar figures on what Australians and poor people in our region are missing out on because Australian-based multinational companies aren’t paying their fair share of tax,” Helen Szoke, Oxfam Australia’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Worldwide, 10.35 trillion dollars were invested in what Oxfam identified as 20 tax havens, including Mauritius, Singapore, Ireland, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, the report said, of which an estimated 79.1 billion came from Australia.

Szoke said their research was based on International Monetary Fund data that showed the flow of money from Australian-based multinationals.

“Unfortunately, there is no way to find out which individual companies are dodging (Australian) tax, as they’re not required to publish their tax affairs on a country-by-country basis,” she said.

Last year, the Australian government passed legislation to tighten multinational tax loopholes on companies with a global income of at least 1 billion dollars.

The Multinational Anti Avoidance Law (MAAL) and the new DivertedProfits Tax are expected to raise around 650 million dollars over four years from large multinationals, a treasury review said in May.

Szoke said the new rules would still not touch “nearly 1,900 large companies with more than 100 million dollars in annual turnover.”