Chasing down multinational tax evaders
Bill Shorten, criticised for adopting a near invisible profile as Labor Leader, outlined a “policy brief” on Monday intended to tackle multinational tax avoidance and add nearly $2 billion to consolidated revenue over three years. The four-pronged approach includes changing the so-called thin-capitalisation rules allowing corporations to claim tax deductions against interest-bearing debt, stopping companies using hybrid entities to reduce tax by better aligning Australian rules on such structures with tax rules in other countries, bringing forward plans to improve compliance through third-party reporting and data matching, and giving the Australian Taxation Office more funding to investigate and pursue errant corporations. Mr Shorten says the measures, which have been evaluated by the Parliamentary Budget Office, will ensure everyone pays “their fair share of tax”.
If there is such a thing as a popular public cause in Australia (and elsewhere in the world), the closure of loopholes to prevent mega-rich corporations from being economical with their tax payments is it. Not a month goes by, seemingly, without new revelations of a multinational tax bill seemingly at odds with the hundreds of millions of dollars they earn from their Australia subsidiaries. The methods these firms use to shrink their tax liabilities to the absolute legal minimum are not the sole preserve of foreign-owned multinationals, either. It is claimed (by the Tax Justice Network) that 57 per cent of the companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange have subsidiaries in tax havens, and moreover, that in the years 2004-13, the top 200 ASX companies had an effective tax rate of 23 per cent, 7 percentage points shy of the official Australian corporate tax rate.
As he seeks to enhance his credentials as alternative prime minister and position Labor for the next election, Mr Shorten could not have chosen a better policy issue than tax avoidance. As he said, “How can we ask Australians to work hard and pay tax if we let big multinationals off the hook? How can Australian businesses compete if they pay more tax at home than big multinationals”?
He could well have added that corporate laws which allow mega-rich corporations to cut taxes are effectively a means for redistributing wealth upwards, and that when revenue from corporations is reduced, governments are obliged to cut their budgets or tax smaller businesses and salary or wage earners more heavily.
The erosion of their tax base is a prospect that frightens many governments, particularly in the continuing climate of economic austerity, which is why Britain, the United States and indeed the entire G-20, have made corporate taxation – avoidance, evasion, transfer pricing and the use of tax havens – a high priority. For all of the official resolve, however, closing the loopholes has proved far more problematic than might have been supposed. For that, we have countries which countenance banking secrecy laws and tax havens (including, ironically enough Britain itself) to thank, as well as the armies of lawyers, accountants, and financial experts who pore over tax codes and identify loopholes for their wealthy clients.
The taxman’s race to stay in the game has been hindered by globalisation’s spread and the quick and easy flow of capital, profits and intellectual property across international borders. And if that were that not enough of an impediment to countries collecting their fair share of tax, corporations loudly and frequently declaim that tax competition is as natural to capitalism as other forms of competition and that governments should “respond” by lowering their corporate tax rates.
For every major Australian company exposed as paying little or no tax, there are others which behave in exemplary fashion. To demonise all of corporate Australia, therefore, might run counter to efforts to preserve the tax base. However, if the tax treatment of business is out of kilter with the public mood, then governments have a responsibility to change the laws – and to give the tax collectors greater powers and resources to police them. Mr Shorten’s intention to shut down loopholes stands in contrast to the Coalition’s record, which has been to do very little even as it claims to be aware of the need vigilance. As such it it looks like an astute political move.
