The Greens want a ‘Big Tech Tax’ on Meta, Google, Amazon & others, claiming it will deliver $11.5 billion

The Greens party, which received one in every eight primary votes (12.25%) at the last federal election, want a slice of the fortunes of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, proposing a “big tech tax” as Australia gears up to head to the polls in the coming months.

Greens communications spokesperson senator Sarah Hanson-Young said that under the plan revenue in excess of $20 million earned from digital services in Australia will be taxed at a rate of 3%.

That includes include advertising, online marketplace services, user data, social media and cloud services.

The Greens’ “Big Tech Tax” would be applied to tech companies with global revenue exceeding €750 million – around A$1.285 billion.

Hanson-Young said analysis of the policy from the Parliamentary Budget Office found it could result in $11.5 billion in federal tax revenue over the medium term.

“Companies that trade in Australia need to pay tax on the money they make in Australia. Global tech giants are making billions of dollars in revenue in Australia while paying very little in tax,” she said.

“Parliamentary Budget Office analysis of digital service revenue shows that in 2022-23 alone, Google raised more than $8.7 billion, Amazon almost $6bn, while Microsoft and Uber both earned over $2.9bn.

“It’s time the tech giants and the billionaire tech bros paid their fair share back to the Australian community.”

The annual Australian Taxation Office (ATO) corporate tax transparency report, released late last year, for the 2022-23 financial year, found that a number of large tech companies, including Australian design giant Canva, which reported more than $1.4bn in income and $69.9m in taxable income, and Netflix Australia (which made more than $1.1bn, paid no tax that year.

Microsoft’s local data centre business paid no tax in FY23 on $1.1 bn of income, while the company’s main Australian arm paid more than $118m in tax on $7.5bn in income, almost $400 million of which was taxable.

Apple paid almost $142 million in tax in FY23 after raking in more than $12bn in income in Australia — only $481 million (or around 4%) of which was reported as taxable.

Facebook Australia paid almost $38 million in tax on almost $1.3 billion of income, while Google Australia paid $124 million on $2 billion in income and its Google Cloud arm paid almost $9 million on $158 million in income.

“At least 12 other countries already have a Digital Services Tax including the UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal,” she said.

“A digital services tax is the first step in reining in the astronomical power that big tech companies currently wield. Not only are they making super profits, they are harvesting and selling the personal data of millions of Australians and ripping off Australian journalists and creators.”

The Greens are hoping to win the balance of power in the federal election, due by May, in order to push for the change.