blog What would you do if you were a multinational technology vendor who the Federal Government was currently chasing over “double Dutch sandwich” tax avoidance techniques which could have cost Australia hundreds of millions of dollars? You’d probably dispatch your global chief financial officer with some hot new technology to hold private briefings with Prime Minister Julia Gillard. And that’s precisely what Google did today, according to Gillard’s Twitter account:

To be honest, while it’s cool to see Gillard getting enthusiastic about technology like this, we’d rather that Gillard ignored the hype factor around the latest Google toys and put the hard word on Google with respect to the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue which the search giant has removed from Australia’s coffers courtesy of its Irish subsidiary.

It’s simply not reasonable for a company like Google, which earns an estimated $1 billion in Australian revenues each year to be paying annual company tax in the order of $74,000, as it did last year, and we wish the PM would take the search giant to task on this issue; a tough government line is what is needed. Photos like this merely give credence to the idea, expressed well through Mungo Maccallum’s ABC column this week, that Gillard hasn’t taken a hard enough line when negotiating critical deals such as the mining tax.

Image credit: Office of Julia Gillard

Tweet

1. Cameron
   Posted 19/02/2013 at 7:23 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Maybe Google are hoping she will wear them to cabinet meetings and Google will get a heads up on what might be in store for them.

2. Michael Wyres
   Posted 19/02/2013 at 7:38 pm | Permalink | Reply

   “I am Gillardus of Borg, resistance is futile…”

3. Tailgator
   Posted 19/02/2013 at 7:42 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Will she have a personalized Google search algorithm ?

   A fair enough commentary but I suspect she is far too savvy to be fooled by PR stroking when tens of $m’s of tax revenue are at stake. (Though given the MRR tax then ….. ;) )

4. Myke
   Posted 19/02/2013 at 7:53 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Your just pissed that Google made 5-6 orders of magnitude more Australian revenue than you and only payed 1 order of magnitude more tax.

   No wait …

   • Renai LeMay
     Posted 19/02/2013 at 8:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

     True dat.

5. looktall
   Posted 19/02/2013 at 8:53 pm | Permalink | Reply

   maybe she’s negotiating a tech tax.

6. Nathan
   Posted 20/02/2013 at 2:08 am | Permalink | Reply

   You weren’t expecting her solve the issue of multinationals legally paying as little tax as possible using morally wrong tax loop holes and tax havens in a single meeeting with Googles CFO?

7. SMEmatt
   Posted 20/02/2013 at 11:19 am | Permalink | Reply

   Don’t allow companies to count cost from parents or sister companies.
   How do you determine a parent or sister looks at majority shareholdings.

8. Tony Healy
   Posted 21/02/2013 at 11:49 am | Permalink | Reply

   Google: They’re normally $1,500, Prime Minister, but we can let you have a pair for $19 billion.

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