Latest / What the Flux / ATO reveals biggest tax avoiders | Getty Images kicked off NYSE | Australia kills credit card surcharges

Transcript

ATO reveals biggest tax avoiders | Getty Images kicked off NYSE | Australia kills credit card surcharges · What the Flux

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: This is What The Flux. I'm Brett.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And I'm Justin. And it's Friday the 2nd of October.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Flux fam, by the time you finish listening to this pod,
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: there will have been five EVs sold in Australia according
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: to the Electric Vehicle Council. Get this one, jazzy boy.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: There was an electric vehicle sold every 100 seconds in
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Australia in the first half of this year. And that
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: means electric vehicles have now expanded their share of Australia's
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: new car market from 10% last year to more than 25%.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of electrics on the road though,
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I must say. Mm-hmm.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It is Friday. That means we're playing Quick Six today
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: in the Flux app, where you can win $ 50 for
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: just answering three business or finance questions correctly. All you've
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: got to do is download the Flux app, turn your
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: notifications on, and be the first to answer the questions correctly.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Three incredible stories today, Jazzy Boy.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: For our first, the ATO has revealed that more than
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: a quarter of Australia's biggest companies paid zero income tax
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: in FY25.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And B-Man, believe it or not, that's actually the lowest
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: share on record. So tell me more.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: So every year, the ATO publishes how much tax Australia's
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: biggest companies pay.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: They call it the ATO's Tax Transparency Report, which is
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: in its 12th year.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: And Jazzy Boy, in this report, they look at Australia's
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: big businesses, those earning 100 mil or more in income,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: to see who paid what. But B-Man, this year's report
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: still contains quite a few big, not so beautiful zeros
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: of tax. Yes, of the 4,299 companies classified as big,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: 1,149 paid no income tax in 2025's financial year.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: That's about 27% of corporate Australia's heavyweights.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And Jazzy Boy, total tax payable dropped over $ 8 billion.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Not exactly a loose change down the back of the
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: ATO's couch.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Nah, but a zero tax bill doesn't automatically mean a
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: company has been doing anything dodgy.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Hmm. So what is the key learning here?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: A company can be swimming in revenue and still be
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: drowning when it comes to profit.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: B-Man, company tax is paid on profit, not on how
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: much money comes through the door.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So if your costs are bigger than your sales, there's
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: nothing to tax.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing, these losses don't just vanish at
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the end of the year.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: In Australia, companies can generally carry losses forward to offset
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: future profits.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: So B-Man, why would a company that's making money still
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: pay nothing?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Because it's using past losses to wipe out this year's
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: tax bill.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: In fact, Bayman, 27% paying no tax this year is
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the lowest share since reporting began.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: And it's down from 36% in 2014's financial year.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: But Bayman, let's not be so naive. Some companies do
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: shift profits to countries with lower tax than our 30%.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Looking at you, Netflix, Spotify, Meta, Apple, Google and Friends.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly the kind of zero that the ATO
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: is hunting down.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: For our second story, Getty Images, the company behind basically
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: every stock photo... He's being kicked off the New York
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Stock Exchange.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Hey Getty, insert image of person in genuine panic here.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Don't we roll.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: So Getty Images is the world's go-to shop for stock
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: photos and news pictures. And it was founded back in 1995.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: If you've ever seen strangers laughing alone with a salad,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: odds are it's Getty.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Or five suspiciously attractive colleagues pointing at a laptop and laughing.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Odds are Getty was involved.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Now Getty first listed on the NASDAQ in July 1996.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: before being taken private by private equity investors, and then
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: it was onsold multiple times.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: It finally made its way back to the New York
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Stock Exchange in 2022, where it was valued at $ 2. 9 billion.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: But Jazzy Boy, Getty has just been booted off the
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: New York Stock Exchange.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Yep, its shares crashed to $ 0. 12, or a market cap
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of just $ 34 million, so the New York Stock Exchange
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: stopped it from trading anymore.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: And started the process of officially delisting it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And B-Man, Getty's roughly sitting on $ 1. 5 billion of debt
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: with hardly any cash.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: So Jazzy Boy, is this just AI eating the stock
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: photo business?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Pretty much. Getty didn't see its moat being challenged so quickly.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: So what's the key learning here?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: A moat is whatever stops competitors from coming in and
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: stealing your customers and your business.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: For Getty, the moat was its size. It had the
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: biggest picture library on the planet. 625 million images, 39
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: million videos. So why couldn't someone else just start their
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: own photo library?
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Because building that would take decades, millions of photo shoots,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and a mountain of legal paperwork.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And apparently several thousand photos of businessmen shaking hands near
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: glass windows.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So the problem is that AI doesn't need to build
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: this library at all.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a brand can type diverse team high-fiving in a
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Melbourne laneway and get exactly that.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: And more than 4 million advertisers were using Meta's AI
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: ad tools by late 2025 to generate images.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: And that hit Getty very hard. Its ad agency revenue
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: dropped 13% last quarter.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So B-Man, the cheesy corporate photo isn't quite dead. We've
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: just cut out the photographer, the models, and the poor
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: bloke who's been fake laughing at a salad for years.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: For our third and final story, the credit card surcharge
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: is officially dead as of yesterday in Australia, but experts
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: reckon that sneaky surcharges might just pop back up somewhere else.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: The RBA finally got their way, B-Man, so tell me more.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: So, Jazzy Boy, the RBA has been doing a deep
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: dive into how Australians pay for stuff for the last
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: few years.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: In particular, they looked at what it costs businesses every
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: time we tap a card and the unexpected fees on
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: top of it.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: In March this year, the RBA landed on a few changes,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: which would drop on October 1 this year, which is yesterday.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: So what are the changes, B-Man?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: First up, surcharges are banned.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: In other words, you can't be charged more than the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: advertised price just because you chose to pay by card.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: So no more $ 6. 17 for a coffee on your card
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: for a $ 6 coffee.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. What else? Well, the fees that businesses pay to
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: accept credit cards are getting cut too, from a 0.8%
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: fee to 0.3%.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So does that mean my coffee will become cheaper?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Well, not quite, because businesses still have costs for accepting card,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and they can't just add it as a surcharge anymore.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So we just pay the fee in other ways?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Seems like it.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: So what's the key learning here?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: In business, a cost never really disappears. It often just
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: finds a new home.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Yep. Economists call it cost pass-through, or in normal person terms,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: someone always gets stuck.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: With a bill. So B-Man, who is going to wear
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: these costs?
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Well, it really impacts the 16% of businesses that have
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: had card surcharges in the past.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Typically your local cafe, a pub, a bookstore.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And while some businesses may absorb the cost, most will
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: probably nudge prices up and hope customers don't notice.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Or think of other creative ways to charge a fee.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: For example, QR restaurant ordering app, MeNew, just added a
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: platform fee to their charges now instead.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Which was conveniently introduced just a few weeks ago.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Similar charge, different name.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So B-Man, it'll be interesting to see whether your $ 6
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: coffee plus 17% surcharge soon becomes a flat $ 6. 50. FluxFam,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: as I mentioned on Wednesday on the pod, a little
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: update from me personally. After more than six years, 1,500
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: episodes and a whole lot of laughs on the pod,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I'll be moving on from Flux and the pod next Friday.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: But Brett, Larissa and the rest of the Flux team
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: have some big ideas in mind.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Obviously very sad jazzy boy because it's been a phenomenal journey.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: But Flux family, yes, it's a big change. But the
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Flux team is very excited about the future of the pod.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Obviously have some big ideas in mind and can't wait
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: to share those with you. Thanks for listening and we'll
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: see you on Wednesday.