The Tax Laws Amendment (Tax Integrity Multinational Anti-avoidance Law) Bill 2015 exposure draft represents an important and concerning watershed in the practice of Australian corporate tax governance.
The draft bill would base the assessment of Australian tax liabilities on an assessment of tax rules in other countries. It undermines global tax agreements to which Australia is a part that have developed to prevent double taxation, risking the phenomenon that those agreements were designed to avoid. It offers a disincentive for the world's biggest firms from establishing operations in Australia. It mischaracterises readily understandable business decisions as tax avoidance and penalises firms for normal corporate structural practices.
The scope of this legislation amounts to a substantial, yet entirely unpredictable, increase in corporate tax, and an attendant increase in the regulatory burden faced by large firms operating in Australia. I dispute the claim that this is a "tax integrity" measure. It is very much a tax increase.
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