To all of the forum's critics of the mining tax well done.

"Fossil fuel multinational Shell does not believe it will ever pay the Australian government a cent in resource taxes for the gas it draws from the country’s biggest gas project, Gorgon.

The projection about taxes on the gas, which is likely to be sold for billions of dollars a year, is contained in the company’s latest annual report, released last month, and was first reported by energy news website Boilingcold."

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/12/shell-expects-to-pay-australia-no-resource-tax-on-gas-drawn-from-gorgon-project

And?

Dear Steele,

The following link is quite revealing:

http://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2019/12/12/tax-big-corporations-pay-none/

Did you even read the article? Read it all because the Graunaid on the Yarra hid the crux of the issue near the bottom. The fact is Shell will incur a PRRT liability for the gas but because they already have unused PRRT credits, they won't have to actually fork over the cash. But the main partner in the project, who presumably doesn't have as much unused tax credits, fully expects to pay PRRT on the Gorgon project.

When you have a company that is actually breaking the tax laws, then you have a story. Otherwise you just have uninformed whining.

Once again - here's big corporations that pay no tax:

http://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2019/12/12/tax-big-corporations-pay-none/

New analysis of ATO data has found that many of Australia's
top fossil fuel companies paid little or no income tax
for years.

Perhaps the ATO should be told to stop their "uninformed
whining?"

Lies by stating & twisting half truths is the main communication you can expect from a raving lefty.

Dear Hassie,

I wouldn't describe mhaze as a "raving Left."

Still I guess anything is possible.

Another ill-informed gotcha. All of these companies would be paying tax as it is impossible to avoid GST, payroll tax etc, so there is your first problem.

The article Steele cites is referring to the Resource Rental Tax, which is only charged to offshore oil and gas companies. It essentially charges profits, rather than taking a percentage of turnover, or just a flat rate per unit of product. The ALP wanted to apply this to all mining and oil and gas companies. Lucky they didn't because it is essentially a profit share between the companies and the government. No profit, no RRT. It's a design feature. In this case it is leading to no government income, perhaps for ever. However, the normal royalties regimes collect in bad time and good. Thanks Steele for drawing our attention to what a bad idea this form of mining tax is.

Foxy's article refers to company tax. Again, this is levied on profits. Presumably none of these companies were making profits for the period: highly likely as oil prices plunged so low that for a while they were negative. I checked one of the companies - Santos. No tax last year, but the year before it paid at the rate of 33.8% and paid tax at similar rates every year before that to 2011 when my records stopped.

When media run these types of stories they are almost invariably dishonest. They know what the real situation is, but they want to feed the prejudices of their left wing readers. This is the sort of journalism got Emma Alberici disciplined by the ABC.

Here is an investigation into the Petroleum Resource
Rent Tax and debit loading in Australia for 2012 - 2016,
published in 2017 which may be of interest:

http://www.apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2017-04/apo-nid76166.pdf

Thanks Foxy. You can't blame companies for abiding by the rules that are set for them. I'm not arguing that the resource rental tax is a good idea - quite the opposite. And I've been consistent on that over maybe 10 years.

"When media run these types of stories they are almost invariably dishonest".

And the anti-business Leftists parrot it because dishonesty is also their weapon.

Glad to hear that Graham.

Dear GrahamY,

Sorry mate but that is an excuse laden piece of tosh.

You say: “All of these companies would be paying tax as it is impossible to avoid GST, payroll tax etc, so there is your first problem.”

Not what we are discussing. However the GST figure would be less inputs so shouldn't be regarded as anywhere near 10%.

GY: “The ALP wanted to apply this to all mining and oil and gas companies.”

Nope, companies under 75 million profit from memory weren't liable.

GY:”I checked one of the companies - Santos. No tax last year, but the year before it paid at the rate of 33.8% and paid tax at similar rates every year before that to 2011 when my records stopped.”

Well that is both laughable and concerning you would think that is what landed in the tax office coffers.

“Ironically Santos, the most troubled player in the oil and gas sector, managed to pay more tax than Chevron, BG (Shell), Puma and Victoria Power. Between them, this bevy of foreign multinationals booked $33.4 billion in revenue and paid not a cent in tax over the four years of available Tax Office transparency data.
Santos racked up total income of almost $15 billion over the four years but, even on the measly $27 million which was left over in taxable income, it managed to pay income tax at a rate of just 11.5 per cent, just one third of the corporate rate. Just a touch over $3 million of its $14,938 thousand million total income.”
http://www.michaelwest.com.au/santos-limited-2019/

They still have around 1.5 billion dollars to offset so happy days.

And how is that royalty dividend going for you? 2019 had record production volumes but Santos paid only 3 million dollars on Product Sales of over 4 billion dollars.
http://www.santos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2020-Annual-Report.pdf

To paraphrase your good self 'When mainstream pundits react to these types of stories they are almost invariably dishonest. They know what the real situation is, but they want to feed the prejudices of their rightwing readers and feed the coffers of the LNP. '

Dear Hasbeen,

How's it going old cock?

As I said to Graham "2019 had record production volumes but Santos paid only 3 million dollars royalty on Product Sales of over 4 billion dollars.
http://www.santos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2020-Annual-Report.pdf"

Now you might happily be part of the cheer squad for these thieving multinational ripping us off blind, but some people have a little more nonce than you old boy. Personally I find willful ignorance like yours to be quite traitorous behavior. But no doubt you are comfortable with your pension being paid by the average worker rather than anything but token payments by these lot busily feeding overseas shareholder accounts.

Well bully for you mate but perhaps you should leave it to those who care.

SR wriggling like a worm dropped on hard ground.

Dear Hasbeen,

No wriggling here mate.

I'm not the one with Shell tattooed on one breast and Santos on the other. The shareholders are obviously dear to your heart and the ordinary Aussie punter can nick off as far as you are concerned.

3 million in royalties on a record production and 4 bloody billion in sales. Hell mate, you would probably even give them a discount on that and tell me to stop picking on the poor buggers.

It seems you can't read a profit and loss statement Steele. If you go to page 63 of that report you will find that they paid $59 million in USD in 2020 plus $154 m in royalty related taxes and $90 m the year before plus $97 m in royalty related taxes. I think your $3 m figure probably refers to a royalty that was income to them.

Despite not making a profit in 2020 they still paid $5 m in income tax, and $30 m the year before, same page.

You will also see that revenue does not translate into income. Page 63 is a cashflow statement, to see what the profit is you need to go to the profit and loss, or to give you a wider view try page 2 where there is a graph showing losses of $1047m and $360 m in 2016 and 2017, and profits of $630 and $674 for the following two years followed by a loss of $357m

I made no claims about the net GST, just that they would have paid it. I'm not sure what level they would pay, given that a lot of their product is exported and therefore doesn't attract GST. In my businesses GST normally nets out to around 3%.

You and your sources also love to confuse turnover with profit. Company taxes are normally paid on profit. Because the price of oil and gas fluctuates, and producers' overheads are very fixed, it is easy for miners to go from making very generous profits one year, to huge losses the next. But even when they make a loss they still pay royalties, which is why royalties are far superior to a rental resource tax from the taxpayer's point of view.

And you're wrong about the resource rental tax only cutting in for companies of a certain size. https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/Minerals-resource-rent-tax/

God you lefties are sick.

If you don't like multinationals doing the mining & extracting the oil & gas, why the hell don't you do it?

If it annoys you so much that companies earn profit for investment in building something, get your lazy ass off the chair, & go organise a couple of those wealthy union owned super funds to do something useful for a change.

Oh, they do. They own more of Santos, Shell & the much hated banks & insurance companies than all the Libs put together.

Just stop whinging some time, you little man.

Habeen,
>If you don't like multinationals doing the mining & extracting the oil & gas,...
> If it annoys you so much that companies earn profit for investment in building something,...

Do you dispute the two statements above are strawmen?

If so, then can you show me where someone expressed opposition to those companies doing the mining or making a big profit, rather than just to how little tax they paid?

Or if not, can you tell us whether your strawmen were deliberate or just a result of poor comprehension on your part? And if they were deliberate, what were you hoping to achieve?

Dear GrahamY,

You charged: “You and your sources also love to confuse turnover with profit.”

Mate I did no such thing. The discussion was around royalties which are suppose to be charged on volumes rather than tied to profits,

As to reading a PL statement may I suggest you brush up yourself. As Michael West attests Santos tends to confuse the notion of royalties with tax whether deliberately or otherwise.

But you have tried to claim: “But even when they make a loss they still pay royalties, which is why royalties are far superior to a rental resource tax from the taxpayer's point of view.”

Oh if that were entirely true. But it isn't.

If you had scrolled down a little further you would have found Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements Section 2: Financial Performance (b) Royalty-related tax expense on page 76.

There you will see the royalty figure of $78 million was then reduced through a deferred tax benefit of $75 million leaving a total royalty bill of $3 million on what was a record production year. This is what this country got for all those millions of tonnes of our mineral resources heading over seas.

So yes the $3 million was correct.

Cont..

Cont..

Now while Hasbeen might have been dancing a jig over this pissy little figure I'm not sure the rest of us should be. In fact we should be screaming from the roof tops.

In fact how on earth have so many of you allowed yourselves to become so beholden to mineral interests? They have done an extraordinary job of getting ordinary Australians to go in to bat for them.

Look at your opening post. “No tax last year, but the year before it paid at the rate of 33.8% and paid tax at similar rates every year before that to 2011 when my records stopped.”

You deliberately didn't use amounts but rather percentages because it didn't expose how paltry the actual figures were.

You claimed “Despite not making a profit in 2020 they still paid $5 m in income tax, and $30 m the year before, same page.”

Sure the Underlying net profit after tax was $727 million in 2018 and $719 million in 2019 while the Net Profit was $630 million and $674 miliion respectively. This is nowhere near the 33.8% you claimed but at $30 million for 2019 is less than 5%.

But why do you take those figures as gospel in any way reflecting what they actually paid into our coffers as corporate taxes? They paid just $3 million in 2018 and a big fat zero in 2019.

Dear Hasbeen,

Does it stiffen the old loins a little to hear Santos paid just $3 million dollars on $1,300,000,000 net profits after tax? Yup $1.3 billion dollars of profit and just 3 million going to support pensioners like you.

You think that is fantastic and for anyone to question it is whinging.

Why are you such a shill for multi nationals ripping off Australians? Do you own shares in them? Well you and your lot have done very well stitching up Australians.

Don't ever you come on here and say you think our battlers need looking after, it will be an utter lie.

You are the mining lobby's patsy and are doing it for free. How sheep like is that?

SR wrote: " The discussion was around royalties which are suppose to be charged on volumes rather than tied to profits,.."

Well no the discussion was around PRRT. Please read the actual article SR originally linked to because it seems he didn't.

The article never mentions royalties. Not once. But it does say..."Shell’s projection that it will never pay any PRRT is revealed in a note dealing with what are called “unrecognised losses” due to tax."

So the resources tax SR whines isn't gunna be paid is PRRT.

Well all know that as soon as there's a number involved SR is out of his depth. And we all know that as soon as SR realises he's screwed up he tries to move the goal posts.

But its a new high (or low?) when SR sets the terms of the discussion and then fails to understand his own terms.

Dear mhaze,

Lol.

Mate when you can't even bother reading the previous posts in their entirety you start to bore me.

Graham put to me in his very first post:

“However, the normal royalties regimes collect in bad time and good.”

I then replied:

“And how is that royalty dividend going for you? 2019 had record production volumes but Santos paid only 3 million dollars on Product Sales of over 4 billion dollars.”

The very first sentence of his next post to me reads:

“It seems you can't read a profit and loss statement Steele. If you go to page 63 of that report you will find that they paid $59 million in USD in 2020 plus $154 m in royalty related taxes and $90 m the year before plus $97 m in royalty related taxes. I think your $3 m figure probably refers to a royalty that was income to them.”

He also added:

“But even when they make a loss they still pay royalties, which is why royalties are far superior to a rental resource tax from the taxpayer's point of view.”

You then mince in in your marvelously inimitable style and announce “Well no the discussion was around PRRT.”

Mate, really? Why? Because there was no mention of it in the article? The above quotes form a discussion, the article doesn't. The article's author is not here to have a discussion with. Why have you struggling with this very basic concept?

This got a laugh: “Well all know that as soon as there's a number involved SR is out of his depth.”

Mate you are the only one out of the three of us who hasn't provided a single figure. Both Graham and I have provided well over a dozen apiece. Perhaps you should leave this to the big boys.

SR what I referred you to with royalties was the cash flow statement. That is where actual payments are recorded. The profit and loss doesn't reflect payments, it reflects the concepts that go to profit and loss, like depreciation and tax credits. They paid what I said they paid. You are wrong the figure was not $3m.

I used percentages which I took from a financial dissection done by Morningstar, and they relate company tax to profit. That's the appropriate way to look at it. All public companies do a reconciliation between the percentage they pay in tax and the nominal rate. There is a difference because company accounts are not tax accounts.

You did confuse turnover with income. You had a long quote from Michael West to "prove" one of your claims which did exactly that. Good to hear you accept he made a mistake. You should therefore withdraw that quote.

The underlying tax figures are irrelevant to this discussion. They are to guide investors on what the position is without abnormals etc. If you go to page 22 you will find there were significant impairment costs in 2020 which they write-back to get underlying profit.

I could go on, but it's obvious your claim, backed-up by Michael West, that this company is somehow dodging tax and not paying enough in royalties, or royalty-related taxes (their term for the RRT), is wrong. I would extrapolate the analysis of the other companies' accounts is equally shocking.

Tap the mat.

Dear GrahamY,

No I didn't confuse them at all. It is perfectly legitimate to question how little tax was owed on extraordinary turnover figures. What benefit do we get out of such huge volumes of our resources being stripped from this country?

No one is accusing them of illegally dodging royalty or tax payments it is just that the return to this country in the form of royalties or corporate taxes for the vast volumes being shipped screams about incredibly favourable tax regime they enjoy.

Do you accept that in 2019 Santos, despite a $674 million dollar profit after taxes, paid zero corporate tax to our coffers?

An example is the unconscionable lift rate on expenses of 15% above the bond rate saw deductible book expenses doubling every 5 years. I will give the Morrison government some kudos in drawing it back in 2019 but those expenses incurred before that date still enjoy the obscene rate. The amount of inflated deductions available to these companies means a discussion on taxes paid on profits after taxes is deluded.

You are correct that despite the 3 million being labelled 'Overriding Royalty' it wasn't the type of direct royalty figure we were discussing. It seems we really can't discern the final direct royalty figure as it appears to be bundled with the excise.

But just to be clear when you say “you will find that they paid $59 million in USD in 2020 plus $154 m in royalty related taxes and $90 m the year before plus $97 m in royalty related taxes” that is not what we got.

In 2019 we received $83 million in royalty related taxes not $97 million and $74 million in royalty and excise payments not $90.

But there was a substantial tax deduction allied to the 2019 royalty related figure reducing it to 3 million. So while the company paid it as per the cash flow statement the foregone tax means they effectively paid 3 million.

Graham,

I was initially surprised at how economically retarded left whingers were, but after Emma Alberici's masterpiece in stupidity and this one from the Guardian, I now understand why Labor and the Greens can put out such unbelievably idiotic policies and left whinge voters just suck it up.

SR,
I haven't engaged in the minutiae of who paid what and what type of taxes because the only substantive issue here is...did Shell or any of the other companies here break the PRRT laws or any other laws for that matter when determining the level of taxes to be paid?

Answer: no.

That you want to talk about anything other than the only substantive issue is revealing and very SR.

SR, our know it all doesn't even know that royalties are a state tax, not a commonwealth one.

Perhaps he hasn't realise our 2 biggest mining states have Labor governments. Perhaps even these governments realise that noisy fools will never do anything worthwhile, & that they must there for court the big multi nationals to get some economic activity going.

There are dozens of resource rich countries/dictators who will demand a lot less than us to get that activity.

The resource tax needs reforming.

Shadowminister,

Well of course you would join Hasbeen in being a full bore useful idiot for the mining interests.

There is widespread agreement that we are getting ripped off by the mining companies. Places like Qatar who now export less gas than us receive over 10 times the royalty we do.

The Labor party really doesn't want to publicly challenge the system because the industry has done such a sterling job of brainwashing the likes of yourself so we are likely lumped with this for the foreseeable future. Well done.

Dear mhaze,

More buffoonery from you as usual. No mate, as I said this is all about whether the manifestly inadequate compensation the the Australian people in the form of royalites or corporate taxes is going to be allowed to continue. There has been zero discussion about whether they are breaking any laws to do so. It is you who has introduced it.

Dear Hasbeen,

You chatter: “SR, our know it all doesn't even know that royalties are a state tax, not a commonwealth one.”

You mate are a mug.

“In 1967, Commonwealth and State officials reached agreement on an Offshore Constitutional Settlement. The agreement includes a  60:40 revenue sharing arrangement of the 10 per cent royalty rate of the well-head value. Any royalties exceeding 10 per cent royalties go entirely to the State.”

http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Petroleum/Royalties-1578.aspx?busselect=8

You also chirped: “There are dozens of resource rich countries/dictators who will demand a lot less than us to get that activity.”

Quote

"Over the next few years, on similar LNG export volumes, while Qatar collects $26 billion in royalties — not including income tax and proceeds from state-owned companies — Australia will collect absolutely zero in PRRT from the booming offshore gas industry."

End quote.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-01/tax-credits-for-oil-and-gas-giants-rise-to-324-billion/10959236

Mate those Qataris will be laughing at mugs like you big time.

"No mate, as I said this is all about whether the manifestly inadequate compensation the the Australian people in the form of royalites or corporate taxes is going to be allowed to continue."

Well, I guess you're hoping no one bothers reading your opening post(s) on this because nowhere did you make that point at the outset. You only tried to move the goal posts once you realised you were on a hiding to nothing with your original claims.

SR,

As you are getting into your dotage you are printing more and more bollocks.

"There is widespread agreement that we are getting ripped off by the mining companies"

No there isn't. The only idiots that believe this are the same simpletons that believe Emma Alberici that there's no difference between revenue and profit.

and

"The Labor party really doesn't want to publicly challenge the system because the industry has done such a sterling job of brainwashing the likes of yourself"

Really? That's why Labor wanted to change the mining from a royalty base to a rent tax which in the first year collected less tax than it cost the government to collect. That disaster is why Labor is now silent on the issue.

Dear mhaze,

You really are retreating to imbecilic obstinance with monotonous repetivity of late.

It is in the bloody article mate:

“The tax, which only kicks in when fields are in their production phase, has long been controversial because since the turn of the century it has failed to produce significant government income despite Australia’s increasingly rich offshore oil and gas fields.”

And this was my quote from it in my original post:

“"Fossil fuel multinational Shell does not believe it will ever pay the Australian government a cent in resource taxes for the gas it draws from the country’s biggest gas project, Gorgon.

The projection about taxes on the gas, which is likely to be sold for billions of dollars a year, is contained in the company’s latest annual report, released last month, and was first reported by energy news website Boilingcold."

shadowminister,

You and Hasbeen as shills might be happy that these multinationals are taking us for a ride paying little to no PRRT, little to no corporate tax and cents in the dollar in direct royalties but the rest of us aren't.

That you both are such useful idiots for them is hardly surprising given your politics, but the rest of us care about this country and its future. These are not renewable resources and when these carpet baggers finally leave our shores without paying their share and instead shareholder pockets full of our wealth it will be because of brainwashed people like yourselves.

Shadowminister,

You ejaculate: “The vast majority of ABC viewers reside within 5km of the CBDs of the main cities with little to no diversity.”

Rubbish.

“ABC’s average weekly metropolitan reach in 2018-19 was 5.6 million people or 32.2% of the five-city metropolitan population.”

“ABC’s average weekly regional reach in 2018-19 was 2.6 million people or 35.7% of the regional population.”

http://www.transparency.gov.au/annual-reports/australian-broadcasting-corporation/reporting-year/2018-2019-30

Yup that is right you muppet, the percentage is higher in the regional areas. You know one day you might just fact check before you inflict your petty little drivel on the rest of us. This really is getting tiring. We are suppose to be in a post Trump era where facts are starting to matter again. You mate are dragging the bloody chain.

Oops, wrong thread.

SR,

You replied to me:

You ejaculate: “

Are you masturbating while writing this?

shadowminister,

No I wasn't.

I enjoy placing different verbs in front of quotes from the usual suspects and I thought this one would be fun.

The definition is "verb (used with object), e·jac·u·lat·ed, e·jac·u·lat·ing. to utter suddenly and briefly; exclaim. to eject (semen). to eject suddenly and swiftly; discharge."

That you mind would go to the second given your 'slippery' history was a given, but to have you raise it so to speak saw you conform, or even perform, as expected.

SR,

What a pile of bullsh1t. You are like a 14yr old boy giggling at an implied profanity. Your response was equally juvenile and phoney.

FFS grow up.