Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. In this year's budget, individual taxpayers accounted for 48 per cent of total revenue, whilst 30 per cent of large corporations operating in Australia paid no tax at all here. It's estimated that one in every four tax dollars lost to multinational tax avoidance can be prevented by requiring all companies to publish country-by-country data. When will the government shift the burden away from individual taxpayers and place a fairer share on multinationals by introducing public country-by-country reporting?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the question from the member for North Sydney about multinational tax reform. The member for North Sydney knows that this is a big priority of this government. If you look at the October budget last year and the May budget this year, one of the handful of tax changes in those budgets was around multinationals. As has been publicly and accurately reported, we are proceeding with a number of the elements of our multinational tax plan. We need a bit more time on country-by-country reporting, and that's the truth of it. We are genuine about our consultation, as you'd expect. We want to get it absolutely right.

There are some elements of the plan which are ready to go, which we've budgeted for and are advancing in this place in different ways, but we've said that we need a bit more time on country-by-country reporting. I'd be very happy to arrange a briefing, if the member for North Sydney would like, from either myself and my colleagues or the Treasury colleagues, because I do understand that your interest in it is genuine. We're happy to keep you posted as we progress through the additional consultation that I and the assistant minister will undertake.