Tax transparency can work for companies if they do it right

The Tax Transparency Package released by the European Commission last week comes amid global moves by the G20 and others to make it more difficult for companies to avoid paying their fair share of tax. But as serious information sharing plans are hammered out between nations around the world, the Australian government is considering protecting the privacy of some of Australia’s richest people, diluting transparency measures aimed at private companies.

Not all corporate tax avoiders will be snared by new rules

Hockey’s budget announcement of two major tax integrity measures was flagged before the budget was handed down, but even that came as no surprise. Integrity, or lack thereof, in our tax system is a hot topic and an easy target for a Treasurer looking to sell a federal budget. The first of the proposed changes is to our GST regime. No-one likes hearing that they will be paying more tax. But, the charging of GST on supplies of digital products and services in Australia by an off-shore supplier will at least make sense to the general public. With the inherent unfairness in the current system and a revenue raising prediction of A$350 million over the next four years, most are likely to accept the logic of such a measure. The second of the proposed changes are new laws to be included in Australia’s general anti-avoidance provision. New laws, which will apply from 1 January 2016, are aimed at multinational companies engaged in aggressive tax practices. The proposed anti-avoidance law is designed to stop multinationals that artificially avoid a taxable presence in Australia. It is difficult to see how this strategy of addressing specific behaviour through what is considered a general provision will work. And, it is these changes that are already causing confusion.

More than naming and shaming needed to stop corporate tax avoidance

The report of the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into corporate tax avoidance comes with the subtitle – “You cannot tax what you cannot see”, with a strong focus on increased transparency. The majority of the 17 recommendations in the interim report relate to improved transparency of the tax affairs of corporate taxpayers. This is a significant step in the right direction. Recent experiences in the war on corporate tax avoidance both in Australia and overseas confirm that “information is power”. Most notably, we have seen increased transparency changing the behaviour of multinational enterprises as well as inducing governments to act.

Government cracks down on tax avoidance through foreign investment rules

The Turnbull Government announced yet another measure aimed at addressing tax base erosion and profit shifting, placing additional requirements on new foreign investment under the existing national interest test. In the last 12 months Australia has seen various reforms within the tax system. However, this latest initiative is a shift as it links Australia’s tax regime with its foreign investment regime. It sends a broader signal to the market that Australia will look beyond the collection of tax revenues to a consideration of national interest.

Company taxation and tax spillovers: Separate accounting versus formula apportionment

It is observed in the real world that taxes matter for location decisions and that multinationals shift profits by transfer pricing. The US and Canada use so-called formula apportionment (FA) to tax corporate income, and the EU is debating a switch from separate accounting (SA) to FA. This paper develops a theoretical model that compares basic properties of FA to SA. The focal point of the analysis is how changes in tax rates affect capital formation, input choice, and transfer pricing, as well as on spillovers on tax revenue in other countries. The analysis shows that a move from SA to FA will not eliminate such spillovers and will, in cases identified in the paper, actually aggravate them.

Measuring tax efficiency: A tax optimality index

This paper introduces an index of tax optimality that measures the distance of some current tax structure from the optimal tax structure in the presence of public goods. This index is defined on the [0, 1] interval and measures the proportion of the optimal tax rates that will achieve the same welfare outcome as some arbitrarily given initial tax structure. We call this number the Tax Optimality Index. We also show how the basic methodology can be altered to derive a revenue equivalent uniform tax, which measures the tax burden implied by the public sector. A numerical example is used to illustrate the method developed, and extensions of the analysis to handle models with multiple households and nonlinear taxation structures are undertaken.

Public good provision and the welfare effects of indirect tax harmonisation

The paper considers the welfare effect of the harmonisation of indirect taxes in two open economies. The revenue from taxation is used for the production of a non-tradeable public good. The welfare levels are affected via two channels: (i) changes in the levels of public good provision, and (ii) changes in deadweight loss associated with the taxes. We develop a number of rules of harmonisation and derive conditions under which they lead to potential Pareto improvement.

Tariff-tax reforms and market access

Reducing tariffs and increasing consumption taxes is a standard IMF advice to countries that want to open up their economy without hurting government finances. Indeed, theoretical analysis of such a tariff–tax reform shows an unambiguous increase in welfare and government revenues. The present paper examines whether the country that implements such a reform ends up opening up its markets to international trade, i.e. whether its market access improves. It is shown that this is not necessarily so. We also show that, comparing to the reform of only tariffs, the tariff–tax reform is a less efficient proposal to follow both as far as it concerns market access and welfare.

Tax principles and tax harmonization under imperfect competition: A cautionary example

This paper shows that under imperfect competition, the welfare effects of indirect tax harmonization may depend crucially on whether taxes are levied by the destination or the origin principle. In a standard model of imperfect competition, while harmonization always makes at least one country better off, and may be Pareto-improving, when taxes are levied under the destination principle (which currently applies in the European Union), harmonization of origin-based taxes (as recently proposed by the European Commission) is certain to be Pareto-worsening when the preferences in the two countries are identical, and is likely to be so even when they differ.

Thin capitalisation – the multinational tax avoidance strategy the budget forgot

We have already seen major amendments to Australia’s tax regime to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). Several more significant measures were announced in the federal budget, most notably the diverted profits tax, aimed at multinationals which shift tax to a lower taxing jurisdiction. Yet to date, a very simple tax minimisation strategy has been largely ignored in the ongoing reforms and was ignored in the federal budget. Excessive debt loading is a problem that not been afforded the same attention as other aggressive tax planning strategies adopted by multinationals.

What if tax reform was a fundamental human right?

As an election looms in Australia, the tax debate continues unabated. Self-interest abounds. When we remove self-interest, we are often reduced to standard design principles for a taxation system. Lost in this discussion is the fundamental purpose of tax, which is to finance government expenditure. Most would argue that tax revenue should be sufficient to meet basic economic and social needs of the community. But how does a community determine what these basic economic and social needs should be? One way is by using a human rights framework. This can provide guidance for both developing and developed countries considering tax reform.

Fundamental Tax Legislation [24th Edition]

Fundamental Tax Legislation 2016 contains the essential provisions from the primary legislation that affects Australia's taxation system. Updated and expanded for changes which occurred in 2015, this volume is an indispensable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students of taxation. The Year in Review section has been updated to summarise the main legislative developments in taxation over the previous 12 months, a listing of the passage of tax related legislation during the last year and the inclusion of reference statistics (such as CPI quarterly figures and individual tax rates for residents and foreign residents). Also fully updated and revised to reflect the changes in 2015 is the Tax Rates and Tables section, which contains an accessible summary of the main tax rates and tables that students will need to refer to for their tax studies.