The killer is multinational corporate tax rates. Do you know why? Because they are ZERO, and if a multinational isn’t on ZERO income tax rate, they are close to ZERO. It’s an absolute disgrace these multinational companies paying ZERO tax. So they’re punching us from behind, they’re kicking us down below, they are absolutely killing us. It’s an outrage but you can’t get this on the normal media. There was one bloke who was giving it to them in the normal media, Michael West, the old Fairfax reporter. He was doing a great job reporting on these bastards, but anyway they kicked him out. Go and have a look at his site, michaelwest.com.au and he names some of these corporate bastards paying mostly ZERO income tax.
To get an understanding of how these multinational companies pay ZERO tax and how we need to look at trying to get them to pay, we need to look back in history. Lets wind the clock all the way back to how tax started. Years and years ago there was a famous king sitting on the hill eating his grapes, getting fanned by one of his juniors. He had his gaggle of women, or men, whatever his sexual preference was in those days and he was just lapping it all up. The pack horses would trot up the hill, carrying all his provisions, bring up all his gold and he sat there as the king and everyone else just copped it.
Anyway, one day the King said, “look I want to make a little bit of a pathway, a bigger pathway up the hill that these pack horses can drag more stuff on”. The King then put down his demand for the first pathway or road. Anyway the malnourished peasants down the bottom of the hill started to say, “well we just can’t provide that, it’s impossible”. “We can’t do it, there’s not enough people and money to do build that”. Then came the light bulb moment that changed the course of history. One of the little peasants who had rotten teeth and raggedy hair, said to his mate, why don’t we tax the bastard? The other fellow said, what a great idea. And That is how tax started.
Here we are in 2018 and we’ve got these multinational companies making all the money in the world, and they’re paying ZERO tax. So what I am saying is tax the bastards. That’s what we should do.
So in that little story of the history of tax, we’re the peasants of today and the multinational companies are the Kings. But behind all those multinational companies are people, and what are they doing? They’re holidaying in Portsea, they’re living in Vaucluse in Sydney. They’re up in the Hamptons in New York, they’re in Monaco and all of the these multinational companies are totally over inflated in their share price. So the top small percentage of the world are killing us and giving it to us and it is unfair.
By the way. This isn’t a left wing argument at all, I advise small business people here in Australia on the best tax outcomes. Small business people often vote for the right parties like the Liberals, so we are not ranting for the left. It’s not political, it is real and everyone needs to get angry about it.
Pat Mannix, Partner, Paris Financial
