INCOME TAX
Dear editor,
According to the Australian Tax Office’s 2020-21 Corporate Tax Transparency Report, if you paid more than $30 in tax during the 2020/2021 financial year you paid more than 24 of Australia’s top corporations.
Those 24 companies include Ampol, BP, Glencore, Exxonmobil, AGL, Chevron, Woodside Petroleum, Shell, and Santos. None of them paid any tax except for Chevron which paid $30, that’s right $30. The other 23 companies paid nothing, zilch, not a cent! Unbelievable!
That’s capitalism in action. Companies making many billions of dollars can, through creative accounting and offshoring headquarters etc., avoid paying any tax in Australia.
If those companies were good corporate citizens, they would contribute to our country to help look after its vulnerable and disadvantaged with a good health system, the NDIS, proper care for the elderly, social housing, and education for its young people.
Taxation funds community services – our emergency services, transport infrastructure, Defence Force and welfare and disaster relief.
Government can only spend what it gets by tax revenue and all citizens and companies should contribute fairly and honestly to better the lives of us all.
Robyn Deane,
Bli Bli.
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US LAWS
Dear editor,
As a democratic nation, held in high esteem as the “Home of the Brave; Land of the Free”, the U.S has little to be desired. Neil Diamond’s hit, ‘They’re coming to America’ for centuries, epitomises immigrants’ dream for a land of equal opportunity. But the reality is entirely different. The hypocrisy exists between the lack of gun control juxtaposed with other laws. The nation and its people are divided, politically and socially; to which we respond: “It can only happen in America!”
The U.S is a land and people of contrasts, conundrums, racism, and inequality, where the powerful and rich hold office and dictate policies and principles. It horrifies Australians who witness mass shootings of innocent people on a daily basis, while the NRA, which backs the Republican Party, refuses to address the prevalence of gun ownership. According to their Second Amendment, it is all Americans’ Constitutional right, “to keep and bear arms”, which “shall not be infringed”. It seems to a be a rite of passage to own AK47s, revolvers and shotguns without question from 18 years. However, it has created a culture of reckless mass killings and gun violence witnessed daily. Any outcry of gun control measures is howled down. It wins votes. In the wrong hands, it has created a civil war.
E. Rowe,
Marcoola.
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CHOOK POLITICS?
Dear editor,
In the chook pen, how many ex- Top Cocks raided the nest eggs and were plucked to make feather dusters? Still strutting and preening but with nothing to crow about when the chickens came home to roost, they scratch for sustenance through the leftovers. Fair dinkum.
Margaret Wilkie,
Peregian Beach.
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