Fairfax newspapers this morning have published a report claiming News Corp. has sent $4.5 billion to the US virtually tax free.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in the US has siphoned off $4.5 billion of cash and shares from his Australian media businesses in the past two years, virtually tax free.
According to calculations by University of NSW accounting academic, Jeffrey Knapp, over the past 10 years, Mr Murdoch’s companies here have paid income tax equivalent to a rate of 4.8 per cent on $6.8 billion in operating cash flows, or just 10 per cent of operating profits.
If true, regardless of whether what the company may have done is legal or not, the act of minimising tax in Australia is damning for a company which often uses its pages as a pulpit to tell Australians what to think and how to act.
To me, a good newspaper is one which is the social conscience of the community, operated by a business we trust, respect and look to for leadership, a business operating in the open, with full disclosure and in full support of the law and the principles of the community in which it operates / serves.
Mark, given your definition of a good newspaper we don’t have any in Australia.