My first topic for 2012 is a musing about Corporate Welfare and Corporate Contribution to the NZ Economy. Whilst such figures as I'm about to discuss might be on the balance sheets somewhere, I'm interested in a quick way of understanding what the key figures are. I'm looking to understand:
- How much net GST did they pass on to the Government?
- How much corporate income tax did they pay in their last complete financial year?
- What their total average income tax payments have been since inception in NZ?
- How much PAYE did they hand over to the government on behalf of their employees
- How much money did they donate or spend on the community?
- What their total export revenue was, less their overseas expenditure?
- Were they in receipt of any government money: %Government Sales; Grants; Funding; Huge Tax Write-offs
Who out there agrees with me and is curious to understand these figures? It's one thing to talk about various people being paid too much or too little, or tax rates, or even tax dodgers. But lets start with the big money. Which companies are contributing to NZ and which just pretend to, but send all their profits overseas and minimise costs within the country?
All of the above metrics would indicate opportunities to contribute at some level. For example, if a 100 million dollar company pays little in the way of corporate tax, it might still hire full NZ staff rather than running sweat shops in Indonesia, and every staff member gets paid a salary and in turn contributes PAYE back into the government coffers. Better our government coffers than Isle of Man's or Maryland's, say I.
Thoughts, comments, stories?
Note: Graphic stolen from Tumeke, where they rabbit on about American Corporate Welfare, and throw in a few NZ examples mixed up with Government misspending (which can be a topic for my next post perhaps).