Transurban: the road to riches

Vanguard September 2014 p. 6
Bill F.

Yet another big business monopoly has been exposed for tax minimisation at a time when the Abbott government is crying poor and slashing social spending.

Toll road operator Transurban has income from 11 tollways, including CityLink in Melbourne and the Westlink M7 in Sydney.

The company paid a miserly $3 million ($3,000,000) in taxes last year, while raking in $1 billion ($1,000,000,000) in tolls from road users. That’s a tax rate of 0.003%.

Most working Australians pay tax rates between 32% and 37% of their income, and don’t have access to an army of taxation lawyers to avoid or minimise their tax debt.

Transurban boss Scott Charlton must be laughing; he took home $4.9 million. ($4,900,000)

This mob is not alone. The operators of Sydney Airport also make billions, but haven’t paid tax since it was privatised and sold to the Macquarie Bank.

What’s going on here?

Stories like these pop up from time to time in the monopoly media. They are not exceptional at all, certainly not news for most people. Everybody knows that the rich and powerful, the corporate and corpulent, get away with murder when it comes to paying their taxes.

Nothing much ever happens as a result of these ‘exposures’. No-one gets slugged for millions, no-one gets carted off to gaol. So, what’s the purpose? Who does it serve?

The likely answer is that it serves the interests of the ruling class. Firstly, by giving the impression that the monopoly media is objective and unbiased; and secondly, by sending messages to the working class “that’s the way things are, so just cop it”.

 
In spite of this, the tactic doesn’t work for long. Rather than demoralising people, it only makes them angry and more determined to challenge the rorts and greedy parasites that run the system.