03 Apr A question of fairness: Tech Giants and Tax in NZ
Apparently, NZ businesses spent over $1,000,000,000 (that is: over 1 billion) on online advertising last year. That’s quite a lot…
However, according to their annual reports, the two biggest players by far (Google & Facebook) combined only paid a measly $750,000 in tax in NZ.
Now, assuming they make a net margin of 30% (according to CNBZ during the 2017 year, Facebook ran at 47% while Google ran at 26%), on a billion dollars of sales, their actual tax bill should be around $84,000,000, or slightly more than 100 times more than they did pay. Google has said they will start paying tax locally, although we are yet to see what it looks like. The government has said they will crack down on such Tech Giants to make them pay tax, but in reality, this will be hard to do.
What do you think, fair?
