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.