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Economic benefits of company tax cuts are real – and underestimated

By Michael Potter - posted Thursday, 9 June 2016


Why does Australia attract substantial foreign investment? Broadly, because we offer better returns than similar investments overseas.

But Australia is a small country, and the pool of funds looking for good investments is vast, particularly with global interest rates so low. As a result, foreign investment into Australia can be particularly sensitive to returns.

Company tax clearly has an impact on these returns. But Australia’s company tax system is uncompetitive, and becoming more so as other countries cut their tax rates (as outlined in the research report The Case Against Tax Increases in Australia, publishing June 7). This may be one reason why non-mining investment is falling, despite the end of the mining boom.

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The benefits of addressing this investment problem are shown in Treasury modelling. Lower tax equals more foreign investment; more investment means a bigger economy, which generates gains for wages, incomes and even a gain to government revenue (or a fiscal dividend), partly offsetting the costs.

Employment is missing from this list, but this is actually a result of the models assuming that there is full employment. If there is an unemployment queue, then a tax cut will provide more jobs. So write that up as an underestimate of the benefit of a tax cut.

A central part of these models is the company tax imputation system, which taxes distributed profits at an Australian shareholder’s marginal tax rate. A high, low or zero company rate makes no difference to the taxation of distributed profits. This also means the windfall gain to Australian banks from a tax cut is not large, contra the arguments of the Opposition leader.

Does this mean that the company tax rate doesn’t matter for Australian shareholders? No. Undistributed profits are affected by the company rate.

Listed companies retained about one third of profits on average from 2005 to 2015, according to the Reserve Bank, while ATO data suggests the average for all companies is about 45%. Effectively, the impact of the tax rate grows as income is retained longer.

Modelling results broadly include retained income on the cost side, but assume it away on the benefits side — so omitting another benefit of a company tax cut: increased incentives to invest out of retained income. Write that up as another underestimate, please.

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Imputation generates a tax offset in Australia; there is another offset, which is for profits repatriated to the United States. For US multinationals, if tax payments in Australia are reduced, this could be fully offset by an increase in US tax.

So does this mean that US companies are indifferent to Australian tax rates? Very clearly no. Apple, Google, Uber, Microsoft and Chevron obviously care: the accusations that they avoid Australian tax are endemic, see for example the Senate Inquiry into tax avoidance.

These companies wouldn’t avoid Australian tax if it made no difference to their worldwide tax payments.

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This article was first published in the Australian Financial Review.



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About the Author

Michael Potter is an economist and public policy commentator and authored the papers Fix it or Fail: Why we must cut company tax now and The looming crisis in business investment for the Centre for Independent Studies.

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