ONE IN THREE PRIVATE COMPANIES PAY NO TAX
The Australian Tax Office has today revealed that one in three Australian-owned companies earning more than $200 million a year pay no tax.
As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull mulls a cut to company tax in the upcoming budget, the data published today reveals 98 out of 321 of Australia’s biggest private firms aren’t paying a single dollar.
This news comes on top of last December’s revelation that one in four big public firms and multinationals also pay no tax.
It says everything about Malcolm Turnbull’s priorities that he would put company tax cuts at the centre of his budget, even as so many big firms appear to be dodging their fair share.
Today’s data is only available because of transparency rules Labor introduced in 2013. Back then, the Liberals – including Malcolm Turnbull – voted against them.
Last December, in one of their many dodgy deals, Malcolm Turnbull and Greens leader Richard Di Natale agreed to hike the threshold for private firms from $100 million to $200 million. That change carved out two-thirds of private firms from the transparency rules.
If Labor’s laws had not been gutted, hundreds more large companies would have had their tax data released for public scrutiny today. Instead, Malcolm Turnbull changed the law to let them keep this a secret.
Contrasts don’t come much starker than this.
Labor stands for a tax system where everyone pays their fair share. Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberals stand for tax secrecy and free kicks for big business.
TUESDAY, 22 MARCH 2016