WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | Contact
Despite claiming the odd few things he shouldn’t, and lying here and there when he lodges some of his returns, Sam Nicholson still pays a pretty reasonable amount of tax.
As a secondary teacher in Betoota he gets some tax incentives as an employee in the public sphere, but overall he pays roughly 15-20 grand a year in tax.
Which is 15-20 grand a year more than the iconic and once national airline pays every year.
“Pretty stiff, isn’t it? That an ordinary kind of guy like me pays more than one of the largest companies in Australia hey,” he said to one of our reporters this morning.
Despite announcing a record first-half profit of $607 million dollars this morning, QANTAS has shown no tax payable for the last few years.
Sam Macedon, a member of Betoota’s Young Liberal explained to us that there is nothing illegal in what QANTAS and other big companies not paying any tax.
“It’s the way the system is. You can’t blame them for the fact that they can legally avoid paying tax by hiring large accounting firms to fabricate losses for consecutive years, restructure holdings, lie about their assets and give the ATO the run around because it’s ballless,” he laughed.
“That’s the way the system works boys.”
Macedon said that although the company could afford to pay its CEO $25 million dollars last year, it’s directors 7 figure salaries and dividends to shareholders, there was nothing wrong with tax laws that allow companies like QANTAS to claim losses.
Nicholson, however, wasn’t so understanding of the QANTAS lack of taxable income.
“I understand that it’s all ‘legal,’ but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a complete crock of shit does it. The fact that people like you and I are asked to pull our weight and contribute to the system, that the corporate fat cats are at the same time rorting the fuck out of,” he said.
“Yeah. Give me a break.”
More to come.
