How?

The Herald reports:

Labour says it will tackle “aggressive tax avoidance” by multinationals such as Facebook and Google which it says is costing the taxman hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

How? A magic wand?

Local concerns were fuelled last year when iPhone and iPad maker and iTunes owner Apple reported paying just $2.5 million on $571 million worth of New Zealand sales in 2012. Google and Amazon’s tax bills were also tiny in comparison with their reported sales here.

Economic illiteracy continues. Company tax is based on net profit, not on gross sales. Any comparison of tax to sales is misleading.

Labour revenue spokesman David Clark yesterday said: “We certainly think there’s a lot of aggressive avoidance going on.”

He said the party was continuing a major research project on the issue and would be more proactive than the Government in addressing it through policies likely to be released before the election.

Again how? Are you going to ban them from selling to NZers unless they pay more tax here?

If Labour want to be credible on this they need to specify what actual changes they would make to tax laws, so we can assess whether or not it would result in one extra cent of revenue.

 

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