The Turnbull government's $4 billion raid on tax-dodging multinationals appears to amount to little more than the natural dividend of hiring extra staff to the depleted ranks of the Australian Tax Office, according to tax transparency campaigners and Labor.
Treasurer Scott Morrison announced in the budget that 390 new staff would be part of a 1300-strong "tax avoidance taskforce" looking at tax compliance by multinational companies operating in Australia.
The price tag for the staffing boost is listed in the budget papers as $680 million over four years.
In 2014, Neil Olesen, second commissioner at the ATO, told the House of Representatives' standing committee on tax and revenue that each $1 invested in employing tax officers returns up to $6 in extra revenue to the public coffers.
On that basis, the new staff announced as part of the tax avoidance taskforce would be expected to generate $4 billion over the four-year period - or almost exactly what the government has pencilled in as the revenue boost from multinationals.
Shadow assistant treasurer Andrew Leigh said the revenue boost applied to the hirings was evidence that the 4700 redundancies at the ATO since the Coalition came to office was evidence that cuts to the department had cost revenue.
"Promising to restore some of the Tax Office's funding in this budget is an admission of failure, not a new crackdown on multinationals. It's too little and too late," he said.
Mark Zirnsak of the Tax Justice Network said the renewed focus on multinationals was welcome.
"This will be a boost to the multinational area but we are well aware there's a lot of tax being lost in other areas. The tax avoidance taskforce does not make up for the fact they have cut much more staff from other parts of the ATO," he said.
Since the change of government, the ATO has had to trim its workforce from more just over 22,000 to about 18,500.
Mr Morrison said the avoidance taskforce will be given extra powers to investigate and penalise multinationals that divert profits offshore.
A new diverted profits tax modelled on Britain's "Google tax" is expected to raise $100 million a year from the 2018 financial year.
Mr Morrison said Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan will provide regular progress reports to government and that information will be released to the public for the first time at the end of the year.
Mr Zirnsak said the government appeared aware that frustration at corporate tax evasion was widespread in the community.
"This was designed to partly neutralise the issue ahead of the election but I think people are going to stick with this for quite some time," he said.
