Greens’ wild bid to tax banks, supermarkets more

The Greens are pushing for “Robin Hood” tax reforms to target the “excessive profits” of some of Australia’s largest companies, including the major banks, Wesfarmers, Telstra and Coles and Woolworths.

Leader Adam Bandt will use an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday to launch the Greens’ three-pronged Big Corporations Tax to fund cost-of-living supports.

The first measure would impose a 40 per cent tax on what Mr Bandt calls the “excessive profits of big corporations”.

Companies would be hit with the tax on profits over $100m, while allowing for a “reasonable rate of return” for shareholders at 5 per cent plus a long term bond rate.

The scheme has been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) to generate $296bn

over the next decade.

Under the plan, the Commonwealth Bank – the ASX’s largest company by market cap – would pay an extra $1.5bn, on top of the $4.1bn domestic tax it paid in 2023.

The remaining two policies would also close the “loopholes left behind by Labor” in the existing petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) in the gas and oil sector, and slap 40 per cent tax concession on the “super-profits” in the coal and mining sector.

All three policies have been costed by the PBO to inject $514bn for the 2024-25 financial year.

“It’s time to make the big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of tax,” Mr Bandt will say on Wednesday.

“To make the big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of tax to make life better for everyone.”

Mr Bandt would also propose potentially using the profits generated from the Big Corporations Tax to expand Medicare into covering dental services.

“Because your teeth should be included as basic healthcare,” he will say.

However behind the PBO’s $296bn costing for the excessive profits on big corporations was a warning that there was a “high degree of uncertainty” with the costing, with the independent body warning that “caution should be taken when interpreting the results”.

“The main component for the excessive profits tax is very sensitive to international and domestic economic conditions,” the analysis read.

“Company after tax profit represents the net of two relatively large revenue and cost amounts which themselves can be quite volatile. The value of shareholder equity can also fluctuate over time.”

It said there was also “inherent uncertainty” in how companies would respond to the proposal, which may include “altering business structures,” and “changing their level of equity or debt”.

Mr Bandt’s NPC address follows Coles’ posting of a 2.1 per cent increase in annual profits to $1.1bn rise in the most recent financial year.

Sales revenue also jumped to $39bn, recording 4.3 per cent growth year-on-year.

The supermarket credited the gains in booming trade due to Australians choosing to stay in, instead of eating out because of cost-of-living pressures.

Amid ongoing critiques of supermarket profits squeezing households and claims of price-gouging, the Greens have called for divestiture powers which could split the Coles and Woolworths duopoly which hold two-thirds of the sector.

While the Coalition has supported the powers as a last resort mechanism, Labor has rejected the calls, warning it could result in unintended consequences.