About 600 of the biggest firms operating in Australia — including Qantas Airways Ltd and Glencore PLC — paid no income tax in the financial year from 2013 to last year, data showed yesterday as the government vowed to keep targeting loopholes.
There has been a global push, including in Australia, for large local and multinational companies to stop using sophisticated structures to avoid or lower their tax payments, which has seen governments lose billions in revenue.
The tax details of about 1,500 large corporations were released by the Australian Taxation Office as a “step forward in improving corporate tax transparency,” Australian Commissioner of Taxation Chris Jordan said in a statement.
While Jordan said companies that did not incur a tax bill were not necessarily avoiding payments, he warned multinational firms — some of which fronted a parliamentary inquiry this year on tax minimization — that their “aggressive arrangements” would be scrutinized.
“Some of these foreign-owned companies are overly aggressive in the way they structure their operations,” he said. “We will continue to challenge the more aggressive arrangements to show that we are resolute about ensuring companies are not unreasonably playing on the edge. If they do, they can expect to be challenged.”
In March, Britain introduced a so-called “Google tax” on firms that divert profits overseas, while Australia recently passed a law to lift transparency requirements that would also see disclosures required for private companies with turnovers of A$200 million (US$143.98 million).
Apple Inc raked in A$6.2 billion in total income in Australia for the financial year from the 2013 to last year, but only had a taxable income of A$247.4 million and a tax bill of A$74.1 million, the data showed.
Swiss commodity giant Glencore booked combined revenue of A$17.4 billion for the same period for three reporting entities, but paid no tax for any of them, the data showed.
In addition, Australian carrier Qantas and oil and gas company ExxonMobil Australia were among other household names that made billions in total income, but paid no tax in the financial year from 2013 to last year, data showed.
Australia had worked with the G20 and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to close the tax loopholes of multinationals, and had strengthened the powers of the taxation office, Australian Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer said.
“It is critically important that multinational... companies are paying their fair share of tax and that’s why the government has been very quick to lead this debate through the G20,” she told reporters yesterday.
Opposition Labor Party Senator Sam Dastyari — who chaired the tax inquiry — said the data supported the need for “tougher laws to crack down on this type of behavior.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained