Andrew Leigh

TAX PLAN IS ON THE TABLE, YOUR MOVE TURNBULL

With the release of the OECD’s comprehensive plan to tackle multinational profit shifting around the globe, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison must now get serious about ensuring big companies pay their fair share.

The OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Action Plan has been more than two years in the making. It lays out a comprehensive 15-point agenda to close the loopholes that have opened up in the tax net due to changing technology and an increasingly global business environment.

Labor has supported the OECD’s work from the start because we are committed to tax fairness. We have long argued that domestic action must go hand-in-hand with participation in the global effort to get our tax laws right for the future. In March, we announced a plan to close multinational tax loopholes that the independent Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated will raise $7.2 billion over the decade.

Former Treasurer Joe Hockey was fond of saying that Australia shouldn’t act on multinational tax ahead of the OECD finalising its recommendations. Yet in his desperate final days as Treasurer Mr Hockey then went ahead anyway and announced a policy so untested that Treasury couldn’t even cost it.

Then, while talking up transparency, he introduced a bill to exempt around half of Australia’s largest firms from Labor’s tax transparency laws.

Scott Morrison now has the OECD’s blueprint and with it, the chance to take positive, practical steps to fix the loopholes in our tax system. There must be no more excuses and no more delays when billions of dollars in tax revenue are at stake.

The G20 leaders will decide on a timeline for implementing the plan at next month’s summit in Turkey. Malcolm Turnbull should push for its rapid and complete implementation across the OECD and stand firm against efforts to water it down or delay it.

Labor has led the conversation and taken the policy initiative on multinational tax. This is the Government’s chance to show it is also willing to pursue serious, structural reforms to ensure everyone contributes fairly to our tax system. 

Coming home from Turkey with anything less than a clear commitment and timetable for delivering the OECD’s tax plan will show that nothing has changed in the Abbott-Turnbull Government.

TUESDAY, 6 OCTOBER 2015

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