Apple NZ has paid no taxes within New Zealand, and has instead been paying the amount due to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). According to the New Zealand Herald, Apple NZ has paid nothing in taxes to the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department for the last 10 years despite making sales worth around $4.2 billion since 2007.
According to the ATO’s 2014-15 Corporate Tax Transparency report, Apple paid AU$146 million in tax, more than double the AU$72 million it paid a year earlier.
Under Australia’s new multinational tax anti-avoidance laws — implemented as part of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recommendations stemming from its G20-commissioned base erosion and profit-shifting (BEPS) project — as of July 2016, companies operating in Australia that have an annual global income of more than AU$1 billion are required to lodge their general purpose financial statements to the ATO if they’re not already doing so with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
As a result, Apple says that it paid 97% of its AU$132 million 2016 Australian profit in taxes to the ATO, paying AU$128 million in taxes and leaving it with AU$3.7 million in net profit. Apple Australia made AU$7.5 billion in revenue during FY16, and globally made $216 billion in sales.
In September, Japanese authorities similarly cracked down on Apple’s taxation practices after discovering that it was sending a portion of its iTunes profit to a business unit in Ireland without paying taxes on the international transaction during 2014 and 2015. Then there’s the company’s ongoing tax brouhaha regarding Ireland.
