The Australian Tax Office estimated last year profit shifting by multinationals, as it's known, costs the government more than A$1 billion ($1 billion) a year in lost revenue.
Among the worst offenders are Google and Apple.
Australians have spent A$27 billion on Apple products since 2002, yet the company has paid tax of only A$193 million, just 0.7 per cent of its turnover, according to an analysis by the Australian Financial Review last year. The US computer giant shifted an estimated A$8.9 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to a tax haven structure in Ireland in the last decade.
Google is much the same. It reported its 2013 Australian tax at 15 per cent of profits " or A$7 million on a A$46 million profit.
That's less tax percentage wise than most Australians pay, but it doesn't sound too unreasonable until you realise it doesn't include an estimated A$2 billion worth of income it earns through advertising locally on its search engine.
The Abbott government now has the multinational tax shifters in its sites. The tax office has been gathering information about the multinationals' tax practice by "embedding" tax officers in their business, a description which makes being a tax investigator sound a lot more exciting than it probably is.
The government now plans to introduce a "Google tax", whereby these profits are taxed at a higher rate, as is being proposed in the UK.
The UK's diverted profits tax is based on profits companies earn locally but declare overseas charged at a 25 per cent rate.
This is higher than the UK's 21 per cent headline company tax rate.
Reports about the tax have prompted the usual dire warnings the business lobby issues whenever governments threaten to potentially limit business' ability to make profits; costs will go up and international competitiveness will wane, it says.
The Abbott government has proved singularly inept at persuading the country to support its previous reforms. With many Australians paying a lot more tax than the multinationals, and a deteriorating budget position, politicians shouldn't have too much trouble selling this latest idea to the electorate.
Emergency lows
If the Reserve Bank of Australia cuts interest rates tomorrow it will take the cash rate down to 2 per cent, a full percentage point below the "emergency lows" hit at the height of the global financial crisis.
Some economists expect the RBA to cut rates to help offset another fall in the iron ore price to a record low last week, and potentially to follow it up with another cut in May.
An interest rate cut would drive down the Australian dollar thereby giving Australian producers more income for their iron ore sales, and boosting the government's tax revenue. That's the theory anyway.
That the RBA is trying to shore up the economy by helping iron ore miners shows how difficult the end of the mining boom has been. The "smooth transition" to economic growth led by non-mining sectors hasn't happened.
And interest rate cuts won't come without consequences.
Lower rates risk throwing more fuel to the fire of surging house and share prices.
Sydney house prices rose at their quickest pace in more than five years in March. The median house price in Sydney is now $690,000, with year-on-year growth of 13.9 per cent. Other cities are also up.
And low interest rates are the only thing propping up the share market which had its best quarter in 25 years in March. It is not the result of healthy profit growth.
Lower rates will increase investors' hunger for dividends, in turn further inflating share prices.
Another rate cut will mean when we fall, we'll fall even harder.
