When the insomnia is especially bad and the Mogadon barely touches the side, we find ourselves reaching for the Australian Taxation Office publications. Works every time.
Happily for us, the ATO released its corporate tax transparency report for 2014-15 last Friday, which includes tax information for more than 1900 of this nation's finest corporate entities. Sadly, though, any chance of sleep went out the window when we pored over it.
Amid the megabucks paid in tax, top of the leader board were the big four banks and miners Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. No great surprise.
According to the documents, however, fellow miner Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's Fortescue Metals generated $9.1 billion in sales in 2014-15 for a taxable income of $208 million, on which he paid just $13.2 million. Twiggy! Who's your accountant? And what is his/her number?
FMG's tax bill compares favourably with the $23 million in tax paid by Fairfax (so that's where the pay rise went), $13.7 million paid by relative minnow Kennards Hire and $13.4 million forked out by the folk at the Warrnambool Cheese & Butter Factory.
So FMG paid less tax than the Warrnambool cheese shop? And all of this in the same week Twiggy became the third-richest person in Australia off the back of a resurgent iron ore price! Outstanding!
In a Herald report last week the ATO explained: "Assumptions about an entity's compliance with their tax obligations, or those of their associated groups, cannot be made solely on the basis of this data." And far be it from us to make assumptions.
