Andrew Leigh

ONE YEAR ON FROM PANAMA PAPERS,

WHAT HAS THE COALITION DONE TO STOP MULTINATIONAL TAX AVOIDANCE?

This week marks the first anniversary of the unprecedented Panama Papers leak that detailed the legal twists, turns and loopholes multinational companies and individuals use to avoid tax.

Multinationals who feared the Turnbull Government would be jolted into action will be popping corks on the Dom Pérignon.

Hard-working Australians who expected the Turnbull Government to close tax loopholes and increase tax transparency are left bitterly disappointed.

The past year has seen the Turnbull Government launch a phoney war on tax avoidance. They want middle Australia to think they’re getting tough with multinationals, while at the same time they give their mates a $50 billion tax cut.

The Turnbull Government’s failures on tax avoidance include:

• Weakening tax transparency laws, exempting two-thirds of large private companies from Labor’s tax transparency rules.
• Cutting over 3000 staff from the Australian Taxation Office.
• Breaking their own promise to create a register of beneficial ownership, which would have revealed the true owners of Australian companies.
• Passing a Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law in 2015 whose revenue gain was estimated by Treasury to be ‘unquantifiable’ (The Turnbull Government likes to say that Labor opposed this law. The truth is that we supported it in the House, but demanded in the Senate that the Coalition also restore tax transparency.)
• Passing a Diverted Profit Tax that will raise just $200 million in four years. That’s one-eighth of the revenue that Australia could raise from multinationals, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Turnbull Government is…
• Opposing Labor’s sensible proposals to close debt-deduction loopholes, which was costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office to raise $1.6 billion over four years.

 Since coming to office, the Turnbull Government has made the tax office’s job harder, and they plan to make it much easier for multinationals to legally pay less tax.

In Malcolm Turnbull’s Australia, Sunday workers get a $77 pay cut, millionaires get a $16,400 tax cut, and multinationals get millions in handouts.

THURSDAY, 6 APRIL 2017

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