On Fri, 7 Nov 2014, "Pidgorny, Slav(GPM)" <slav.pidgorny@anz.com> wrote:
Hong Kong isn't an independent country, it's a "special administrative region". So it benefits from the protection of the Chinese army while being allowed to have policies that wouldn't necessarily work for the entire country.
Ok, make that "comparable to those in Saudi Arabia".
Saudi Arabia is a country that relies on oil exports and probably couldn't survive if the oil money stopped. Note by "survive" I don't mean "continue current policies", I mean the ruling class probably wouldn't continue living there (if they live at all). While Australia is over-reliant on mining income (and the Liberal policies make this worse), it's no-where near as bad as Saudi Arabia. If all mining in Australia ceased it wouldn't change things much.
In the other thread it was suggested that the financial dealings in Luxembourg made a direct comparison with Australia inappropriate.
By whom? In the other thread someone also labelled use of tax breaks "money laundering", a blatant misuse of the term. So not everything that was suggested elsewhere withstands critical analysis.
Tax breaks aren't money laundering if a company does legitimate business there. However countries that have low tax also tend to have a lot of money laundering, it's just a good place for that sort of thing. In the middle ground there are businesses that make very dubious claims about tax. Like when a company has their R&D labs in the US but claim that a subsidiary in a country like Luxembourg owns all patents and copyrights to reduce tax.
When companies base their operations in Hong Kong to avoid Australian tax the solution is not to reduce corporate tax in Australia in a false effort at competing. The solution is to tax all companies in an appropriate manner to avoid having people like us left paying for their externalities.
Solution to what problem, sorry? If you consider the companies' use of offshore tax breaks a problem then reducing taxes in the locations where they operate will avoid the need to do that.
Kogan doesn't "operate" out of Hong Kong. They are an Australian company that ships from there to avoid tax.
Don't think that you are one of the "better off" people that the Liberal party caters for. Your email address shows that you are one of the workers.
So what? If taxes are reduced then I either have cheaper goods or more money to spend. Good for the workers.
If taxes on your income and the items you buy are reduced then that's the case. However the Liberal party wants to increase such taxes to cover the costs of reducing the tax on Gina and Clive. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/