Australian corporate tax takes up 20 percent: data

CANBERRA, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) — The amount of tax paid by Australia’s biggest companies has risen 20 percent in a single year, data has revealed.

According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) ‘s corporate tax data for financial year 2016-17, which was released on Thursday, the nation’s 1,470 biggest companies paid 45.7 billion Australian dollars (33 billion U.S. dollars), up 20 percent from 2015-16.

The significant growth came mainly in the mining sector on the back of strong commodities prices.

The figure represented a tax compliance rate of 95 percent, up from 94 percent, with the ATO being confident it will hit 98 percent after it takes enforcement action.

Data for 2016-17 was the first to include tax collected under the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law (MAAL), which prevented technology giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook by avoiding tax bills through the use of offshore tax havens.

As a result of the MAAL, those companies booked, and paid tax on, an extra 7 billion AUD (5.06 billion USD) worth of sales in Australia in 2016-17.

“While the level of performance is already world-leading, we are confident our strategies in conjunction with new laws and resources will result in continued improvements over the coming years,” ATO Second Commissioner Jeremy Hirschhorn said in a media release on Thursday.

“The community can be confident our focus on large corporates and multinationals is working and our tax system is operating well.”