Another multi-million dollar scam exposed

It is hard to believe that anyone could be scammed out of $2 million plus, and I assume that they must have had too much money and/or not enough sense.

Unbeliavable.

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I think Australia gets scammed to the tune of $Billions when it comes to Multinational Tax breaks enjoyed by some rather well know businesses. Yet we continue to have it happen so perhaps these smaller ones are just “leakage”.

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I think this used to be an issue in the past, but the government (both in Australia and internationally) are catching up with those who deliberately avoid tax.

Australia and other G20+ countries have now a more coordinated approach to take action against such companies to ensure that appropriate tax in paid in the countries where the income and profits are generated, rather than using tax structures to minimise tax in such countries and export profits to other countries which have more favourable tax regimes.

The ATO has also has some significant wins against many multinationals who in the past haven’t paid the taxes potentially due the Australia. While there is possibly still work to be done, it appears that the government’s actions are in the right direction and the previous avoidance opportunities are being closed.

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There’s still a long way to go though regarding the multi-national tax ripoff in this country. The larger problem however is the long standing and continual ripoff of our resources for bugger all by large companies. When you look at what Australia receives for what gets ripped out of our soil and oceans compared to what companies have to pay in the rest of the world, we’ve been getting taken for a ride for ages. And in that department there is no mood by any political party to change the status quo.

This is a bit off topic. 
but
in most other parts of the world the royalities paid for resources is based on the profits made by the company extracting ghe respurces. The situation in Australia is different where statebased royalities are paid per unit of extraction ($/tonne mined).

While the rates that could be paid in other countries may seem more than that in Australia on face value and as a raw percentage, the total dollars in royalities paid is significantly less as they are paid on profits. If a miner makes no profit, no royalty is paid. It is easy to have high costs of production to minimise profits and royalities paid.

In Australia, this is different where royalties are paid for every tonne extracted. If the miner make no profits, the same amount is paid as another miner who is making a profit. This ensures that the state receives the value for tbe resource irrespective of tbe profitability of the operating company. These royalties are paid to the state and the mining companies profits are still subject to Commonwealth company taxes.

The dollar royalties paid in Australia end up being significantly higher than many other countries, however, having a unit based royalty profides greater certainty for the mining company as they can include these known/fixed costs when budgeting or seeking financing.

It should also be worth noting that in some countries the state/Crown don’t own the resources like in Australia, but the landholder and/or the mining tenement holder. In such cases, the state does not receive royalties and only income is from other levied taxes (company tax, payroll tax etc).

There has been reporting by some political parties about how cheap Australian royalities are compared to the rest of the world (Canada is an example often used), but such commentary has been for political gain and not based on facts.

Edit: One other I did omit was the governmetnt regimes which are very different to Australia and other democratised nations (authoritarian, kingdoms etc), where the state owns the resource, manages or mines the resources and also takes all the profits from the resource sales.

There are many independent economic papers about the historical contributions to the Australian economy from mining. I am not here to argue the merits or otherwise of the PRRT, but some of the political information to try and justify the tax was not overly reliable or accurate. It is also possible to changes tax regimes, however, any change may have unintended consequence which could be seen as being either positive or negative

The gas projects in water off mainland Australia are also a special case as they only fall under the jurisdiction of the Commonwaelth. Yes, these operations don’t pay state based royalties and from what I understand is one of the reasons why the PRRT was introduced.

All businesses have deductions which come off their bottom lines (whether tools for a tradie, products manufactured or not sold and potentially become waste or other operating costs of a business). If the government chose to remove such deductions, then to be fair, the removal should apply to all deductions across all businesses and the impacts on those businesses and the economy would need to be fully understood.

If you do have time, this paper by the World Bank summaries the roytalties/mining specific taves imposed by a selection of countries around the world, including Australia:

_Welcome to World Bank Intranet

What other countries do in relation to taxing items, this is up to other countries. There are countries which tax our agricultural or manufactured products more and less than that which occurs in Australia. While this is interesting, it has no relevance to Australia , besides potentially making Australia’s exports less/more competitive in that particular markets if Australia is penalised/tariffed differently to other supplying countries. In such case, submissions would most likely be made to the WTO.

Some countries also subsidise commodities to make them more affordable to the consumers in the same countries.

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My comment was slightly off topic but was likening one ripoff/scam to another in that both are done by large corporations and the Australian public is the victim. But in saying that I cannot let you get away with a bit of fact twisting. If the large corporations did in fact pay the amounts that they should, yes they would be paying a fair rate. You conveniently left out the whole PRRT setup though, through which the concessions take away the benefits Australia would gain.
For example the 5 new offshore gas projects coming online (Prelude, Gorgon, Pluto, Wheatstone & Icthys), will not be paying anything in any form of royalties until at least 2029, which is admitted by the companies themselves. And if there is not a significant rise in the gas price there’s a fair chance that there will be no royalties paid for that gas over the life of the projects, which can be 30-40 years depending on the gas field they are tapping. There is also the fact that under the PRRT system if these behemoth companies cause an oil spill from a well, they get to deduct the cost of cleaning it up from any future royalties - Australian public pays the company to clean up any mess they make whilst taking our resources they aren’t paying for
yep, seems legit!!!
So based on facts and not political party reporting, yes Australia does have a relatively high royalty rate for our resources. But that means squat if due to the ridiculous setup of the PRRT system nothing gets paid.
There is also the different ways resources are treated in different jurisdictions which is another topic entirely, but related just the same. Japan collects more tax off our LNG that they import, than Australia collects in PRRT from ALL our LNG production combined! As a further insult Japanese consumers often pay less for our gas than we do here - seems legit.

Yes and all those businesses can use a 15% uplift for any of their deductions they carry as well. I remember talking to a tradie just the other day who was mentioning how nice it was that the value of his uplifted deductions doubled every 4 years. It’s ok to be a mining company lobbyist/apologist as that’s your free choice, but there’s no need to be a shill about it, just be honest.

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Only given the original post was about a SCAM that involved illegal acts!

The solution to ending Legally acceptable SCAMs?

Much the same perhaps. Education of those susceptible to being duped!

That the price of domestic gas in Australia is so high is certainly an excellent example of just how well educated many of us are? <Not!>

Even more frustrating when you compare the cost of bottled LPG with that at the pump for a vehicle, that includes Federal excise/tax in the cost!

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It had not occurred to me before, but the Centrelink robodebt program increasingly seems like a government scam. When called out through a legal process they drop the demand in play and claim ‘nothing to answer’ so they can continue their nefarious way. If this is not reflective of a scam, what is? OK, maybe not a scam per se, but.

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Approved by the WA government, another in her line of questionable dealings (eg scams) or a legitimate enterprise? It seems nothing is out of bounds to be prosecuted seriously, except political whistle blowing.

Caveat emptor, big time.

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Unbelievable. Some persons have no conscience or shame.

Veronica Macpherson, or the WA government, or both?

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How gullible does she think investors are?

New scheme targets FIFO jobs

Ms Macpherson told the ABC that the cooperative enterprise would help her deliver her goal of providing liveable cities in the Pilbara, so fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers would not be necessary.

_Ms Macpherson described it as a social enterprise, involving some people who had been involved with Macro.

“Like me, they don’t work for money, they work for a cause,” she said.

Building cities in the Pilbara. No wonder the WA Govt signed off on her business - sorry, someone other than Ms M’s co-operative?

Another scathing article regarding Centrelink’s robo-debt actions, with input from a previous member of the AAT for some 37 years.

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That this government has repeatedly doubled and tripled down on the veracity of their ill advised badly executed authoritarian robo-debt program yet continue to be returned says enough of us voters are indeed mushrooms, or at least do not prioritise having good government or even an ordinary but ethical one. OK, that is a single issue but still one of many similar questionable actions including non-tendered, non-publicised, sometimes FOI-resistant, distributions of money to favoured groups.

I am not welded to any party but as a non-native Aussie what we as a nation accept and tolerate from governments has continued to astound me.

I suspect that we have tolerated this as it seems that every government benefit, scheme, subsidity or funding is rorted by many individuals who either receive the monies but believe they are entitled to more, or those that don’t qualify but think they should so manipulate thing to get what they think they deserve.

It appears that the government (and most constituents) has had enough in some respects and possibly picking the low hanging fruit when there is enough information to do so. Unfortunately not all the low hanging fruit is rotten, but is placed in the same bag as all others, unless they can prove otherwise.

The ABC news article (both on website and 7.30 program) were silent on then the debt was first advised. I suspect that it wasn’t recent if the oustanding debt has been handed over to a debt collector
usually on of the last stages of debt recovery.

If the debt has been known about for some time, then why hadn’t banks been asked for records, ‘kept for 7 years’, before 2019. If the debt occurred in 2010 to 2012, the bank would have had some of these records up until recently. I wonder if the notices of the debt was ignored and hope they would go away
and no action to provide evidence up until lately
or does the ATO not advise its customers and give the debt to a debt collection agency first, before notification?

Some of the things in this story don’t quite add up and the ABC possibly should have been more robust in its investigation asking some of the above questions.

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That targets one segment of ‘us’ but ignores the segment called dodgy government that provides $100’s million in ‘support’ to small groups of vested interests who have neither expertise nor often any capability, and awards contracts to favoured companies that have questionable delivery, and so on.

While I worked in the public service it seemed that government (all coalition during my time) was 100% certain the only reason any public servant who was not a political appointee had the job was to rort the public. I thought of that as them doing ‘projection’, and they continue to do it toward their public service as well as toward their opposition.

It is not just the number of people who take advantage which is reported in some circles to be comparatively small, but it is the largesse or rewarding particular constituencies without oversight.

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I suppose that it classed as legal, while individuals/businesses exploiting government monies for personal gain isn’t.

Being legal must make it all right then? The people responsible for Opal and Mascot towers probably didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ either by that standard, although those juries are still out.

When government actions are not legal but need to be to protect their sorry selves, there are also retrospective laws passed (by both parties when necessary) to make some things legal.

I personally do not judge integrity or honesty by a litmus test of ‘is it legal’.

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Another article regarding the Centrelink Robo-debt scam.

I had to love Centrelink’s pathetic cop-out regarding their stealing Julia Banks’ tax refund on the basis that they did not have a current postal address for her despite having both her emil address and her mobile phone number.

Why do Centrelink bother to get more that one conatct detail if they are too stupid to use them?

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Another article regarding Centrelink’s disgraceful robo-debt scams.

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