Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Albanese government is acting to shed light on Frankenstein companies who are using overseas subsidiaries to rort our tax system. They've got bits and pieces of body all over the world, all arranged to make sure that taxes owed to this country aren't paid to this country. That sort of Frankenstein beast needs to be dealt with, and part of our strategy of dealing with that is this particular bill, the Treasury Law Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023, that's been put forward. It's bringing integrity and transparency to a fair paying tax system.

We're currently consulting on draft legislation to introduce a 15 per cent global minimum tax and domestic minimum tax for multinational and national companies with annual global revenue of at least $1.2 billion. While we're consulting, we're passing this bill to increase transparency and stop multinationals claiming excessive debt reduction to duck their tax obligations. Jason Ward from the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research has done a deep dive into some of these dodgy tactics used by companies that operate and earn their profits in Australia but send the Frankenstein taxes overseas so that they can avoid tax altogether. Mr Ward found that Amazon Australia, 'Organises their businesses so the contractual payments from clients are paid directly to Amazon entities in Delaware, with a small amount of that revenue being returned to locally based Australian companies via service agreement.' Ward also found that Amazon was reporting, 'Low profits or losses in Australia by using potentially artificial expenses to avoid corporate income tax payments.'

Amazon's cloud computing business, AWS Australia, claimed they were running at a loss by reporting $1.1 billion in administrative expenses. What makes that number is clear as mud: while they're raking in billions of dollars, they continue to penny-pinch on taxes and thumb their nose in the face of governments around the world. In 2023, Amazon had a revenue of A$878 billion and its founder, Jeff Bezos, had a personal wealth of $309 billion. Bezos is going to space using money stolen from Australian taxpayers while we're in the middle of cost-of-living challenges. He and his Orwellian company are literally reaching into the pockets of the Australian taxpayer, taking their hard earned dollars and squirrelling it away from the eyes of the law.

Another company who uses these opaque tactics is McDonald's, whose franchisee model allows it to send profits offshore in the form of royalty fees for the use of intellectual property. In 2020, McDonald's paid $558.5 million in royalties to a shell company in the United Kingdom. This means the royalties were taxed at the UK's 19 per cent corporate tax rate rather than Australia's 30 per cent tax rate. By sending the fee offshore, the company's Australian income tax bill was reduced to just $120.4 billion. The golden arches, which have a long history of wage theft, union busting and insisting their staff give up their lunchbreak to use the bathroom, are shamelessly refusing to pay taxes. While Australian businesses don't have the benefit of profit-shifting, shell companies and tax havens, they pay their fair share for health, aged care and other essential public services.

This bill will create transparency for revenue collection and level the playing field for all businesses. We welcome the support for this bill from the Tax Justice Network Australia, Publish What You Pay, the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition. The government thanks them for contributing to the detailed consultation and inquiry into this bill.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry acknowledges that the government had listened to and implemented stakeholder feedback during the consultation process. The Liberals and Nationals, on the other hand, said in their dissenting report that they can't support this legislation, and they called it 'anti business'. The Liberals and Nationals would rather the potential tax revenue be in the offshore piggy banks of Bezos and McDonald's and their other big-business profit masters. That means less funding for schools, less funding for hospitals, less funding for housing. They are welcome to go back to those shifty tactics of those corporate giants over the wellbeing of Australian taxpayers. But I'm on the side and we're on the side of acting to close the corporate tax rorts used by multinationals and ensure that they pay their fair share of tax right here in Australia.