En Passant

Chevron is sacking 1200 workers from its Gorgon Liquid Natural Gas development in Western Australia before Christmas.

The low price of oil has seen the US multinational develop restructure plans around the globe and Australian and other workers are bearing the brunt. Oh, and Australian taxpayers too, if Chevron can get away with a bit of profit shifting. In October it lost a profit shifting tax case in the Federal Court and will have to pay back tax, interest and penalties of about $270 million for this breach of the tax laws.

The ATO recently released the Corporate Tax Transparency Report. It shows that in 2013/14 Chevron Australia Holdings Pty Ltd had sales income of $3 billion. However it had no taxable income and hence paid no tax in Australia.

Federal ‘Environment’ Minister Greg Hunt, fresh from his ‘success’ at COP21 in Paris, has approved an expansion of the Abbot Point Port near Bowen. This will involve ‘dredging 1.1 million cubic metres of spoil near the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which will then be disposed of on land.’

One of the main beneficiaries of the decision will be Adani and its Carmichael coal mine, about 170 kms away and for which the Federal and State governments have built a railway to transport the coal to two ports, one of which is Abbot Point. Abbot Point is about 20 kilometres from the reef.

Adani Abbot Point Terminal Holdings Pty Ltd had total income in 2013-14 of $268 million but had no taxable income and hence paid no tax in Australia. Now remember, that is the port.

Perhaps Adani’s Carmichael mine itself will turn a profit? Unlikely, given the low price of coal.

Even if it does make a profit, tkeep in mind what Kaye Lee said in ‘The truth about the Adani bonanza’ in the Australian Independent Media Network on Wednesday, ‘Adani Mining in Australia is owned by an Adani company in Singapore, which is in turn owned by an Adani company in Mauritius…’ This suggests that if there is any profit it won’t be taxed in Australia but may be shifted to Singapore and then Mauritius and maybe on to the Cayman Islands.

I will leave it to you to join the dots. Resource companies, rapaciousness, destruction of the environment and of jobs, and tax minimisers are words that all come to mind.