Australia Making Inroads On Tackling MNE Tax Avoidance
Kelly O’Dwyer, Australia’s Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, has stressed that the Government has taken and will continue to take steps to tackle corporate tax avoidance by large businesses.
Speaking to Sunrise’s David Koch on August 23, 2017, the Minister said: “We absolutely believe very strongly that you cannot choose how much tax you pay here and that absolutely goes for big multinational companies. There have been a number of loopholes that have existed under the previous Labor Government and this Government has been shutting them down.”
O’Dwyer said that the Government “has got over 1,000 audits that are being conducted already, [and] that a number of these companies have admitted that they have had to restructure their affairs to pay back taxes to the Government.”
The Minister said that Australia has passed a number of laws to ensure that multinational corporations pay the right amount of tax in the country. “The Government has recently passed the Diverted Profits Tax, there are a number of audits and assessments that are going on, which will mean that these companies, these big technology companies that have a minimal presence here in Australia, but are making sales in Australia, will have to pay significant amounts of tax,” she told Sunrise.
O’Dwyer noted that the Government clawed back AUD4bn (USD3.18bn) in the last financial year in terms of the assessments raised, and that around about AUD3bn of that has come from just seven multinational corporations alone.
