Australia's biggest mining co Glencore, pays no tax

Fifteen billion dollars (that's $15,000,000,000) is what mining company Glencore earned the last 3 years. Zero is the tax they paid on that $15billion. Yet they want me, who has paid full time tax for 30yrs, to pay more. Oh fuck off.

Have Australians had enough of this bullshit? Why should these companies be able to get away with this? How can it claim tax breaks for such a shonky set up? 

Australia's largest coalminer, Glencore, paid almost zero tax over the past three years, despite income of $15 billion, as it radically reduced its tax exposure by taking large, unnecessarily expensive loans from its associates overseas. 

At up to 9 per cent, the interest rates on these $3.4 billion in loans were double what the company would have had to pay had it simply borrowed the money from the bank. 

As it was claiming tax breaks in Australia on these inflated interest payments, the secretive Swiss-based multinational actually increased its lending to other related parties interest free. This may include its executives. Nobody from Glencore, which used to be called Xstrata, was available for comment despite repeated requests. 

The aggressive tax avoidance tactics of Glencore Coal International Australia Pty Ltd have been identified in an independent analysis of the company's accounts for Fairfax Media by an expert in multinational financing. Along with the blatant irregularities in its borrowing and lending, the study also found a hefty increase in Glencore's coal sales to related companies (up from 27 per cent to 46 per cent of total sales, with no explanation), indicative of transfer pricing - also known as profit-shifting - and an activity that appears to breach Section IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act - the part that deals with schemes designed to comply technically with the law but whose ''dominant purpose'' is really to avoid tax. 

''The reality is that the whole of the Glencore Xstrata Group is now run as a series of business units controlled by one company (Glencore Xstrata Plc, incorporated in the UK, listed on the London and other stock exchanges), with its registered office in Jersey (a tax haven) and its head office is in Baar (Switzerland),'' the report said. 

''The truth is that Glencore Coal Investments Australia's operations in Australia are, because of the Group's business model, branch operations of the Swiss-domiciled parent entity, which uses the now dormant legal shell of an Australian body corporate in an attempt to hide the reality of its branch business in Australia. Read more