TAX reduction, not for you! for people who earn real money!

I am not sure there are many people who understand the law, only people who dedicate their life to finding loopholes really understand it, no matter what system you put in place, someone will bend over backwards to screw the system for their own personal gain.

It starts with people not wanting to work and abusing the welfare system and ends up with companies who think up every more intricate ways to avoid paying tax, they are both bludgers.

I am sure companies have to do what they can to minimise tax otherwise the shareholders will probably sue them for negligence.

 

Nobody said your an idiot for paying tax . You would be considerd an idiot if you refused any rebate or incentive your entitled to .
Yep your right that everyone has their hand out . Why wouldnt they ? i know i have both hands out in the vain hope of getting a flyshit of what ive paid out back

Im not sure i know who the one is paying no tax here . Its impossible to not pay tax in australia even if its the gst or the tariffs on your beer & cigs you still pay somewhere down the line.

 

Thats good if they declare what they actually make but in reality thats not common

 

I think the idea is that if you claim your company only made $1 last year for tax purposes then Fidel cut you a cheque for $1 and kicked you out the country!

 

That's what happened, or so I believe. TBH I don't have the inclination to find out.




Here's more from the UK

 

It is.

When you get a bit more of an idea about how it works you can see how it's a total rort.

That example above works pretty well for any sort of business but for newer, online businesses it's even easier.

Google, for example, doesn't actually do any real business in Australia. They have a local office that is responsible for providing "marketing services" on behalf of Google HQ, but if an Australian business buys some online advertising with their AdWords service, the Australian business is actually transacting with Google Singapore. The tax rate in Singapore is lower than the tax rate in Australia. Where the money goes after Australian businesses pay it to Google Singapore subsidiary is anyone's guess - it could go to Hong Kong, the Caymans, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Antigua or any one of dozens of other tax havens (or it could be bounced around several jurisdictions), so there is nothing to suggest Google just decided to set up their main regional office in Singapore and the people of Singapore get a huge benefit out of the tax Google does pay there.

Another neat little trick is to have the money (technically) earned off-shore by A1Corp (rather than AussieCorp), A1Corp then "invests" the funds with GreatInvestments Fund and GreatInvestments Fund then loans the money to AussieCorp. AussieCorp then claims a tax deduction on the interest payments in makes to GreatInvestments Fund.

All the different legal entitles are owned by the same people, but with this kind of an arrangement you can not only avoid paying any tax at all, but you can get an effective negative tax rate with the deductions on the interest payments.

Obviously everyone tries to minimise their tax liabilities, but it gets to a stage where you're just taking the piss.

 

Quoted for truth

 

Wow for someone so vocal on business & all its nuances you didnt know how they worked around the tax system .

 

Most local businesses wouldn't do what Big A.D. posted... you need an army of lawyers, accountants and offshore companies etc.

Far easier to fudge the tax system through other means.

 

You can set up an offshore company over the internet and have it up, running and doing paper transactions inside of 24 hours.

Add two more days to have it's bank account opened and a VISA debit card with no name on the front on it's way to you in the mail.

Obviously it's helpful to spend a bit on legal and accounting if you're a big firm and need to integrate the scheme into your existing operations, but if you're on a budget you can get it done yourself for less than two grand.


[Edit] This is the point - it's just moving numbers around. Moving numbers around is very, very cheap.

 

The flipside arguement is also true though in that a government who will tax you for breathing is also really taking the piss as well, are they not?

Rebates and incentives are mostly geared towards speculators and the wealthy, not the common man and I believe that's by design.

Besides, I don't aspire to gamble on housing or hire a team of accountants just to avoid paying tax, especially when I still use the services those tax dollars provide.

Put another way, I know the government are incompetent, corrupt fools who waste as much of my tax dollars as they do spend properly, but I don't believe that me trying to circumvent the system and avoid paying my share whilst laying full claim to the services those dollars provide are the answer.

Didn't your parents ever teach you two wrongs don't make a right?

 

Do you have a "breathing bill" from the ATO you're able to post a scan of? I've never seen one myself but people keep telling me about them (black out your personal details of course, but if you can show the calculated number of breaths per year and the rate payable per breath that would be great).

Seriously, levying a tax on companies that make money by using a communal resource? Wow, what a novel idea. We should maybe look at doing that for all companies that benefit from communal resources. Like, if the company makes money by selling products that are delivered using roads, we should say that they need to pay tax so we can keep the roads maintained.

 

No, I have an electricity bill from my service provider in double digit percentage increases since the last one instead.

Same thing.

 

Does a Carbon (dioxide) tax count?

 

At least a bill is for a service you have used, it might be expensive but you still used the service.

If I asked you to pay my electricity bill that would be a different thing altogether.

 

No they didnt teach me 2 wrongs dont make a right

They tought me whats good for the goose is good for the gander :

 

What's your electricity bill got to do with breathing? Do you need some kind of electronic device in order to breathe?

Either post your breathing tax bill or shut up about there being a tax on breathing.

 

That's what's happening right now in Queensland with the solar panel rort

 

I know this story

 

Back to the topic of the first post: Starbucks, to pick on one corporation, is a franchised operation. Their franchisees definitely pay corporations tax on the profits going through each outlet. Should the profit be taxed again at the consolidated level? That's unfair.

I don't care if Unisys or Siemens or GE minimise their corporations tax in any given country. Their operations are global in many ways. Most of their business activity in Australia is marketting and management and importing. Their production, accounting centres, call centres, design centres, research and patenting offices, they're not here, and they don't generate wealth to be taxed here. Their largest business expense in a services economy like ours is labour: their employees are all good little taxpayers and they aren't going anywhere. Their income tax is still collected. Plus the consumption taxes (GST/VAT/US State sales taxes) paid for the services used here that the company pays are not deductible into nothing. Plus the payroll taxes for the priviledge of actually hiring the employees of that country. Plus the byzantine costs of government compliance to stay in business that are used to employ whole government departents. Plus the levies on their electricity and gas and water use. Plus local government development application fees (as per the example above if a council is paying Tesco's development fees thats a government not a corporate problem). Even down to the taxes included in their vehicle registrations in any given country and all the fuel they use. Royalties and telecommunications frequency rent where appropriate. Anyone can think of another category of tax that their employer has to pay that is unique to that industry.

They pay a lot. Picking on the corporations tax is so short sighted.