Why is it a misrepresentation?
Why is it not real?
Is it not the work of professional analysts to be capable of understanding complexity?
Is it appropriate that they take complexity and present it after analysis in a way we can all understand?
It’s an aside as @person indicated. Apologies if it has stirred a negative response to say it isn’t reliable and therefore a mistruth. The overall position is that the largest companies/businesses are majority foreign owned remains solid and based on good data. There are two independent sources. One from Bloomberg and the other the ATO.
The correspondence in these results gives us the confidence to say that Australian big business is foreign owned by around 79 to 80 percent.
Even as Australians if we have some interest in an overseas managed equity fund, EG Blackrock, that has some investments in Australia, it’s Blackrock which has control and decides how to draw on that wealth.
The Australia Institute research also also looked at the bottom-up data using ABS data and investments held by Australians including companies not in the top 20.
Excluding unincorporated small business it looks like the bottom-up calculations get us to a figure of 30 percent identifiable Australian ownership. Given the likely bias in foreign investment towards big companies the estimate of around 79 or 80 percent foreign ownership seems to be reasonable for big business.
If there is complexity to be considered it’s the many different ways any change in how companies are taxed can flow through to foreign investors. Will it affect Australian investors? Direct investment by Australian’s in Aussie companies comes with the offset of franking credits. Investing indirectly through overseas based trusts in theory offers none of those benefits. It’s difficult to see as a result how it’s effective in respect of tax benefits, nor capital gains given the structure of CGT for personal Aussie investors.
Apologies if it’s only an aside. It is material to any discussion of applying a super profits tax to know just who will be most impacted. In respect of dividend earnings there is a clear option to provide imputation benefits (which only flow to Aussies) based on the higher tax rate. The ATO will know just how this works out as will each listed Company through it’s registry and provisioning.
It’s more worthy of review than rebuke.
Likely worth opening further, given the current boom in corporate profits in contrast to losses in consumer purchasing power. More so for the significant numbers of consumers already on a financial knife edge.
