A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there lived a Sheriff named Wyatt Earp. Now, part of Wyatt Earps duty was to seize assets belonging to debtors to enable those assets to be sold to satisfy creditors. Stay with me for a moment...this happens in NSW... One day, Wyatt knocked on the door of a huge company to seize some assets, and lo and behold... ...the company had gone into liquidation..... But wait a second....the companys name was still outside on the building...the receptionist was the same great sort with the little short dress and great hooters...and guess what....the CEO and Managing Director were still the same people... You see, what had happened, was this....to avoid creditors, the company had gone into voluntary liquidation, and reformed another company the next day, and transferred all their stock to the new company. Wyatt was shown the Certificate of Registration, together with the transfer documents and the inventory of stock, all now owned by the new company....then they showed him the door.... Wyatt was non-plussed.....the debtor company had no assets, but was still trading, with the same staff, in the same premises.... therefore he couldnt seize assets...the debtor company was now non-existent.... The point of the story is this.... If a company (with a carbon tax liability) can do this legally to avoid creditors, why cant that company cease trading via liquidation, pay their creditors and transfer their assets to six other newly formed companies to reduce that carbon tax liability to zero, as it is now divided by six...of course the six new companies would be run and owned by the same mob that owned the company in the first place...the only difference would be that staff would be employed by one of the new companies...etc.. Another example of avoiding the carbon tax is as follows: Beenleigh Abbatoirs (Brisbane) have a large carbon tax liability. To avoid it, instead of putting up their prices to cover the carbon tax payable, they are simply going to close down for four weeks, and send everyone on annual leave. Therefore the carbon emissions are reduced (by one twelfth, obviously) to a zero liability level, they dont put their prices up so they are still competitive, and everyone just takes their holidays at once.... If Magoo can work this one out, so can clever accountants.......
Well, you dont know much about business do you....Beenleigh Abbatoirs, if they pass the cost on, cease to be competetive, as they are all about equal atm...where do you think people will go if B.A. put their prices up??? A boat building company here on the Gold Coast has already gone off shore, costing jobs...but is still in business... there are ways and means to get around this draconian tax....
The carbon tax will end up costing the government a lot of foregone tax revenue, don't know how they think Australia can maintain a high average standard of living with no value adding or manufacturing.
How, if all other competitors are in the same situation. It's not complex.......just pass it on! The consumers have been compensated!
Don't you understand, ALL competitors are not in the same situation. Going off shore is a excellent answer to circumvent the carbon tax, as these companies no longer have that cost and there is no cost bring back to Australia. You forget Australia is not in an insular market but a global economy.
There are a number of things that these guys can do to reduce their carbon output. Apparently simple things! A lot of hooha! They'll invariably use alternate energy as well, and will sit pretty for years. They are big businesses, of course they'll play around with the issue of the carbon price.
Those things to reduce the carbon tax also cost money but why make the effort when Australian industries are already at a competitive disadvantage? Maybe the unions will agree to cut blue collar wage rates to ten cents on the dollar? Even sheep can be live exported & brought back in Reefers.
Cost effective stuff, like covering land fill, or flaring methane. This one may cost a little more: methane to generate electricity. But the cost savings in the long run will be huge!!! I bet you these guys have already got things in place but are playing with politics! Any money
You might have a chance of winning if you could talk Julia into putting up tariffs or implement an effective level playing field scheme.
