Lots of companies pay little to no tax. It's often totally legal. But should taxpayers reward them?

‘There's a contradiction at the heart of the Australian government's relationship with the corporate world’.

ABC in Australia reports on corporations receiving government funds whilst simultaneously working hard to ensure they return nothing to the public purse via taxation.

The reports uses CICTAR’s recent reports on microsoft and DP World to illustrate the problem and highlights calls for greater transparency, quoting CICTAR’s Jason Ward:

"Responsible local companies can’t compete for government contracts if multinationals are able to avoid tax obligations and outsource labour to the lowest cost countries."

The report concludes:

‘Profit-shifting doesn't happen by accident. It requires extensive work, expensive consultants and a web of complication.

More importantly, it requires people within companies to make deliberate choices about how to pay tax in a country like Australia, where services funded by taxpayers — schools, hospitals, a secure environment, the court system — make them profitable and safe places to do business.’