Rio Tinto’s head of tax – who was recently hauled before the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance about the lack of tax the miner pays – will now be also advising the Abbott government on how to improve the tax system and increase transparency in relation to the tax… – Continue reading
1. Global focus on transfer pricing There has been a recent surge in regulatory attention around the world towards pricing arrangements within multinational corporate groups. Regulators are concerned that these pricing arrangements may be used as a means of profit shifting and therefore tax avoidance. The price at which an… – Continue reading
International fast-food giant McDonald’s avoided paying half a billion dollars of tax in Australia over a five-year period by shifting profits through the low-tax nation of Singapore, a new report by a global coalition of trade unions says. The report, which has been funded and commissioned by a coalition of… – Continue reading
Premier Colin Barnett (left) and Chevron manager Colin Beckett at its LNG project on Barrow Island. Secretive oil major Chevron Corp has taken the art of tax avoidance to its ultimate form thanks to a scheme so aggressive that it goes beyond merely reducing exposure to income tax, but rather,… – Continue reading
Accountants are wondering whether the New Zealand government will move to tax millions of small parcels and services bought offshore in the May 21 budget, including digital downloads. Australia acted on the issue in its budget a few days ago. New Zealand Customs does not collect goods and services tax… – Continue reading
The big miners were sprung for their Singapore profits sling, and the United States tech giants shown up for their Byzantine tax structures, but there was little time left to spend on other sectors where multinational tax chicanery was rife. When the Senate Inquiry into Corporate Tax Avoidance reconvened to… – Continue reading
Federal budget: winners and losers Ross Gittins: Small measures and a media circus Federal budget 2015: Full coverage Your five-minute guide to the budget The head of the treasury believes that the easy days of high economic growth are over and that Australia will need big personal income tax cuts… – Continue reading
Following on from a press release issued by the Treasurer on May 11th, the government has released a draft bill containing a new limb to the general anti-avoidance provision, which is directed at foreign multinational groups who have global revenue exceeding $1 billion. The law will apply where: • the… – Continue reading
Last night, the Federal Treasurer, Joe Hockey MP, released the 2015-16 Federal Budget. After public self-evaluation of its last budget as over-reaching, the Government has gone back to basics whilst still focussing on repairing the budget deficit in the medium to long term. The budget deficit is projected to be… – Continue reading
Westfield Corp looks to sever ties with Australia Westfield Corp’s pending move to list offshore would be positive as long as the stock was included in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, according to brokers. On Wednesday, at the group’s first annual general meeting after its restructure last year, Westfield’s… – Continue reading
Treasurer Joe Hockey is facing criticism for both acting too quickly and not doing enough on tax avoidance by multinational ¬companies after tabling legislation on Tuesday night to stop companies shifting taxable profits out of Australia. An unnamed 30 multinational companies with more than $1 billion in revenue from Australia… – Continue reading
The Australian Taxation Office is probing Commonwealth Bank over a nine-figure sum arising from tax breaks claimed by the nation’s largest company for research and development. In a hostile environment for tax minimisation by large corporates, CBA and the ATO are wrangling over an amount ¬believed to be in excess… – Continue reading
The OECD plans to have international agreement on new tax rules developed as part of its project to tackle aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals through the Base Erosion and Profiting Shifting (BEPS) project by the next G20 summit in November, with implementation completed before 2020 ‘at the latest’ Pascal Saint-Amans,… – Continue reading
Frank Lowy’s Westfield Corporation intends to take another step in cutting ties with Australia by shifting its head office overseas, once an offshore stock market listing is finalised. The company is entirely focused on shopping malls in the United States, Britain and Europe, with all Westfield-branded centres in Australia and… – Continue reading
Head of forum’s tax policy will push for reform to cut down on avoidance. The OECD has attacked the “extremely aggressive” tax planning of companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple as it pushes for reform of global tax rules to cut down on avoidance. Pascal Saint-Amans, who heads up… – Continue reading
Glencore is under audit by the Australian Taxation Office for the low level of taxes it pays, claiming billions in “losses” overseas and resorting to low-tax or no-tax nations such as Bermuda, Singapore and the Cayman Islands. The Swiss-based mining giant revealed it was being investigated by the ATO in… – Continue reading
“I think it’s going to backfire,” says RSM Bird Cameron’s Craig Cooper The Abbott government’s planned laws to deal with multinational tax avoidance are an opportunistic revenue grab that could be vigorously resisted by the United States, according to Craig Cooper, director at accounting firm, RSM Bird Cameron. Technology companies… – Continue reading
A new tax on foreigners buying property in Victoria will add about $15,000 to the price of an average city apartment, the state government has revealed as it defends the extra stamp duty fee in the face of industry unrest. The government has come under furious pressure from the property… – Continue reading
A complaint has been lodged with the ASX alleging an announcement about Australia’s biggest coal development contained misleading information about the project’s economic potential. In December last year Downer EDI Limited announced to the ASX its partnership with Adani Mining, to provide services for the controversial Carmichael mine in central… – Continue reading
Efforts by the Australian government to combat money laundering could have a highly impact effect upon the huge revenues its reaping from foreign purchases of domestic property. Regulators have recently come under fire for failing to adequately monitor foreign acquisitions of Australian real estate and ensure that they are in… – Continue reading
Grant Wardell-Johnson, KPMG Tax Partner, has said that while it would have been better for Australia to await the outcome of the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting Action Plan, the international tax measures proposed recently by Treasurer Joe Hockey “have the benefit of being highly targeted.” On May 11,… – Continue reading
Australia to fine tech tax-dodgers 100% of their avoided tax, plus profits Australia’s treasurer* Joe Hockey has revealed that he and other money ministers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have shared plans to have online retailers charging the appropriate consumption tax on intangibles and goods bought… – Continue reading
The Australian government announced a world-leading crackdown on Monday on alleged tax avoidance by 30 multinational companies that will likely force them to restructure their businesses before next year, reports Reuters. “These companies are diverting profits earned in Australia away from Australia to no-tax or low-tax jurisdictions,” Treasurer Joe Hockey… – Continue reading
AUSTRALIANS hoping to gorge on offerings intended to stimulate the economy in Tuesday’s Federal Budget have been warned to prepare for lukewarm but at least digestible fare. Though the electorate’s appetite has been whet by the sizzling entree of another Reserve Bank rate cut this week, economists expect the main… – Continue reading
Deloitte managing tax partner Thomas Pippos says the IRD are using electronic payments and websites to pursue tax cheats Budget-conscious tax collectors are increasingly turning to popular websites and other e-channels to chase undeclared taxable income, a top accountant says. Inland Revenue Department no longer had capacity or interest in… – Continue reading
There are fears the Government’s plans to prevent foreign controlled banks from slipping under the taxman’s radar, could end up hitting their New Zealand customers in the pocket. The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is proposing to impose a higher tax burden on non-resident investors who get income from interest, dividends… – Continue reading
The major accounting firms and other consultants would be forced to disclose all meetings with the federal government and the Australian Tax Office under a policy proposal to be debated by the ALP National Conference. If adopted, a future Labor government would also force ministerial staffers to observe a cooling-off… – Continue reading
The Senate enquiry into corporate tax avoidance has been successful in disclosing some difficult-to-find information about corporate groups as well as the Australian Taxation Office. Out of it has come news of an important detection tool developed by the tax office to identify corporate groups for investigation. The detection tool… – Continue reading
UK funds invested in India could face demands for tax from which they thought they were exempt. Minimum alternate tax (MAT), a tax on the book profit of a company, has been in existence in India in its current form since 2001 and is levied at 18.5 per cent. Because… – Continue reading
Canberra is planning a major assault on high-end financial crime through the establishment of a new Serious Financial Crime Taskforce drawing on the nation’s major law enforcement, business, and taxation regulators, and provided with $127.6 million over four years to secure criminal convictions. The move, which will be outlined in… – Continue reading
The Government will provide $127.6 million over four years to aid financial investigations and prosecutions addressing superannuation and investment fraud, identity crime, and tax evasion, it announced today. It will establish a taskforce building on work done by Project Wickenby — a cross agency task force fighting against tax evasion,… – Continue reading
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has given the Senate inquiry into tax avoidance a blueprint on how to properly calculate the amount of tax multinationals should be paying each year on their Australian operations. A critical new methodology provided to the inquiry by the ATO, and seen by the ABC,… – Continue reading
The nation needs to talk about tax. That’s not a new proposition. Every incoming government seems to think it’s a good idea to conduct endless reviews, and the tax system is often at the top of the list. John Howard did it and actually came up with worthwhile reform with… – Continue reading
In the spotlight for tax practices in Australia, Apple has raised a flag about the potential cost if it is required to pay past taxes to Ireland as part of a European Commission investigation. Apple has raised a flag about the potential cost if the company is required to pay… – Continue reading
FORMER treasurer Peter Costello says changing or ending tax credits for shareholders who get dividends would see investors send their money offshore. The financial system inquiry (FSI) last year questioned the wisdom of dividend imputations, where shareholders get a tax credit for the profits a firm shares with investors via… – Continue reading
Singapore is not a tax haven, it’s a value-adding hub. That is the claim of the island nation’s Economic Development Board, the Singaporean government agency that’s been charged with attracting business and investment. It has disputed recent claims at the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance that it’s being used… – Continue reading
Big hue and cry from the rich and the powerful against modification of tax return forms has again pushed the govt on back foot John Maynard Keynes famously said the avoidance of tax is the only intellectual pursuit that carries a reward. Historically, tax ‘avoidance’ is understood as an intellectual… – Continue reading
The Tax Office is cracking down on what it’s described as “contrived arrangements” that allow hundreds of wealthy individuals with self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs) to pay no tax on income from shares. Cases are still being reviewed and it’s unclear how much tax revenue may be at stake. But the… – Continue reading
Australia’s richest live in harbourside Sydney and earn more than eight times the nation’s poorest, who live in rural NSW, Tax Office statistics show. The latest Taxation Statistics for 2012-13, based on information people report in their tax returns, again highlights the enormous pay gap between the nation’s richest and… – Continue reading
Although you may be working in China, does the ATO still consider you an Australian resident? It’s just one of the things you need to get absolutely right. The tax requirements for Aussies working overseas vary from region to region. Aussies working in Hong Kong will find last month’s tax… – Continue reading
The Shareholders Association is making “strenuous representations” to the Inland Revenue Department over what it says is an unfair tax facing possibly thousands of New Zealand investors as a result of a proposed demerger of Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton. In an effort to simplify its business, Melbourne-based BHP is… – Continue reading
Can you trust a company to run a clean and profitable coal mine when its financial controller has a case of the vagues? If the testimony of Adani executives in the witness box in the past few days is any indication, the prospects for Australia’s biggest coal project are not… – Continue reading
In brief: At the recent G20 meeting in Washington, Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the establishment of a working group between Australia and the UK to develop initiatives to address so-called diverted profits involving multinational enterprises. What are the implications for multinationals doing business in Australia? Partner Martin Fry (view CV)… – Continue reading
BHP Billiton is contesting A$522 million (S$544.8 million) in Australian tax bills on its Singapore marketing operations up to 2010, after having paid almost no tax in Singapore since 2006, the global miner told an Australian Senate panel, reports the Business Times. The figures were released on Monday by a… – Continue reading
The subdued outlook for the Australian economy is forcing companies to look overseas for ways to grow their business. Professional services giant EY’s Australasia Capital Barometer says the weak economic environment has resulted in many companies abandoning plans to look for acquisitions, or else search for opportunities overseas. Only 44… – Continue reading
BHP Billiton is contesting $522 million in Australian tax bills on its Singapore marketing operations up to 2010, after having paid almost no tax in Singapore since 2006, the global miner told an Australian Senate panel. The figures were released on Monday by a Senate committee that is investigating corporate… – Continue reading
The Federal Court has found that copyright does not exist in a digital data signal (Seven Network Limited v Commissioner of Taxation [2014] FCA 1411). Clayton Utz acted for Seven in the proceedings. The rights to broadcast the Olympic Games Seven Network Limited held the exclusive rights to broadcast certain… – Continue reading
A property investment company does not believe its advert selling Auckland property as a cash cow for offshore landlords is exploiting New Zealanders. The radio advert has been on air in Singapore since Monday for Property Solutions Singapore, which is a subsidiary of Dunedin-based company Australian Property Solutions. It said… – Continue reading
Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has left open the option of scaling back superannuation concessions as part of the tax white paper process. Speaking at the Australian Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne, Mr Hockey also flagged a package for small business and startups in the upcoming federal budget. Mr… – Continue reading
The Australian federal cabinet has decided to give a greater priority to negotiating a tax treaty with Israel, reports AAP. Treasurer Joe Hockey told the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in Melbourne on Wednesday talks will be at the forefront of the government’s activity in the not-too-distant future. “Cabinet has decided… – Continue reading
