Dentsu Aegis Network, News and Foxtel listed among Australian corporate tax avoiders
Dentsu Aegis Network has been named by the Australian Taxation Office as paying no corporate taxes on its local income of over $291 million in the 2015-16 financial year.
The details were released yesterday by the ATO in its 2015-16 corporate tax transparency report, which also named News Australia and Foxtel as non-payers of local corporate income tax.
The news comes four days before the tender for the federal government’s master media account closes – a contract that last year earned the incumbent Dentsu over $175 million.
From : https://annualreport.ato.gov.au/04-appendixes/appendix-9-advertising-direct-mail-media-placement-and-market-research
Dentsu Mitchell Media Australia Pty Ltd
Project Wickenby advertising campaign – $22,000
Award winning irony.
I think it’s probably more accurate that the $175m in the Dentsu / Fed Govt case is “billings”, not “earnings”.
Not that that distinction makes it any less uncomfortable for the govt’s own master media agency to be doing what they’re doing.
It’s like an agency that has the business of an airline, but puts their staff on any flight from any airline that is cheapest. Of course not illegal, and definitely in the pecuniary interest of the agency (and usually its ulimate shareholders). But also not… great optics for the relationship.
As some brighter spark than me once said, wouldn’t a more unusual headline be “Company pays more tax than it has to”?
While I think the behaviour of these companies is questionable, surely a large part of the fault has to sit with the government (current, previous, any really) for having a system full of loopholes that allows them to do so?
The LNP passed cases of cash to Foxtel didn’t they? It’s a palaver to say the least. Meanwhile our teachers, nurses and community champions, continue to get paid a meagre wage, as the Billionaires’ empire gets propped up… The world is mad.
I like forward to Darren Davidson and the rest of the Pravda editors at The Australian media team covering the shocking tax avoidance of their own bosses in the same sensationalist terms they save for Google, Facebook et al