ATO catches out tax cheats

MULTINATIONAL companies including Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have been forced to cough up millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.

The Australian Taxation Office yesterday revealed details of its tough scrutiny on non-complying businesses and wealthy individuals who had escaped paying their fair share of tax.

Labelled by the ATO as “bloodhound work”, the ATO’s Tax Avoidance Taskforce, which was set up two years ago, has had huge success and reeled in $5.6 billion in extra tax in just two years.

Multinationals, large corporations and wealthy individuals have been forced to meet their tax liabilities after a finetooth comb was run over their financial state of affairs.

And some of the worst offending industries included those operating in the e-commerce, mining and pharmaceutical sectors.

The ATO’s deputy commissioner, Mark Konza, said Australians “remained concerned about corporate tax avoidance”.

“I want everybody to know we are on to it,” he said. “We were supposed to raise $3.7 billion and we’ve already raised $5.6 billion so far in two years.

“We have issued over $10 billion worth of assessments and it usually takes two or three years to collect those bills.”

There are plenty more businesses likely to be caught redhanded for tax avoidance — the ATO has 71 audits covering 67 multinational corporations under way.

Mr Konza said large overseas companies were often the worst offenders when it came to tax avoidance and the ATO had worked closely with other countries to catch out cheats.