Of course it was opposed by the Lieberals, however they got ganged up on in the senate with Labor, the Greens, and cross benchers combining to pass the amendment.
So what does it mean? Well apparently large multi-national corporations didn't have to obey the financial laws like other Australian companies. Instead of giving a full financial account of their shenanigans throughout the financial year, they could just sort of summarise it. Leave out all the details so nobody knew WTF they were doing or how much Australia was being ripped off by them. They gave it a special name of course, called "special purpose" reporting. Lovely.
So everyone got the shits with these foreign multi-nationals, especially as Australian companies had to comply. Everyone except the Lieberals that is, who whinged about all this extra red tape bla. So in the senate gang up it was like "resistance is futile" and the senate passed the amendment. After all, the senate was really pissed off over being duped by the lobby group with no members recently.
Now, companies with global revenue of $1billion a year will have to fully disclose all their financial bullshit to all. Hah!
Rather, it was brought by the Greens, Labor and the cross-benchers led by independent senator Nick Xenophon – and opposed by the Coalition.
It will be lamented too by a suite of global corporations who operate in this country as it is compels them to the same standards of disclosure as local companies who are listed publicly on the Australian Securities Exchange.
So it was that Xenophon, Greens' senator Peter Whish-Wilson and Labor's Sam Dastyari led the evening's assault in the Upper House to introduce an amendment to the Tax Laws Amendment (Combating Multinational Tax Avoidance) Bill 2015 – measures to ensure that any foreign company with more than $1 billion in revenues files proper financial accounts, not the skimpy "special purpose" variety so often designed to conceal devious tax schemes.
The move follows an investigation in Fairfax Media four days ago exposing the furtive shift by no less than 20 multinationals to "special purpose" reporting. The likes of Johnson & Johnson, BUPA Australia, Unilever, Roche, Adidas, BMW, Pfizer and News Corporation had stopped providing full disclosure and, with the connivance of their auditors from the "big four" accounting firms, suddenly decided to deem themselves to be "non-reporting entities".
It was a "loophole" which had to be shut down, said Whish-Wilson. "Why do Australian companies have to provide it (full service accounts) but not Google and Microsoft?" Xenophon asked the chamber.
The Finance Minister however was not happy. "The government doesn't support this amendment," said Mathias Cormann. It was "red tape", an "excessive compliance burden" and it was not supported by the "global experts". Of course. It was these very "global experts" – often from PwC, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and KPMG - who audited the multinationals, signed off on their sly shift to bush-league financial statements and raked in millions in fees while having the cheek to advise governments on tax policy. SMH
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