Google, Microsoft and Apple have all defended corporate structures that provided for shifting most of the taxable revenue to offshore jurisdictions. News Corp Australia asked senators to impose a goods and services tax on its competitor Netflix. In response, the largest tech firms in the world had to defend themselves and their tax schemes. Google’s branch in Australia and New Zealand refused to disclose its Australian revenues, but revealed that in 2013 the company had paid $7.1m in tax on $46m in profits. However, most of its local revenue was taxed in Singapore, as the Australian branch of the company provides sales and marketing services to Singapore branch.

Microsoft revealed that last year the company had also shifted about $2bn to Singapore in revenue from Australia, declaring only $100m in the country, over the same reason – the company explained that products and services are sold to Australia by Microsoft’s Singapore group, with sales staff being located in Singapore, and Microsoft’s clients being billed by the Singapore branch as well.

Finally, Apple confirmed it had paid about $80m in income tax in Australia – from revenue of more than $6bn. However, Apple doesn’t agree that this amounts to aggressive tax planning.

The tax office is auditing the three companies at the moment, and this is no surprise – they couldn’t expect Australia to like being not paid taxes, could they? In the meantime, the local authorities suggested a so-called “Google tax” in the budget to require multinationals to pay a higher rate. In response, Google suggested that Australian tax breaks for research and development should be spent in smaller start-ups instead of such giants as Google and its fellows.