Australia's blitz on profit-shifting

The Australian Financial Review is carrying an article (subscription-only, sorry) which says:

The Australian Taxation Office [ATO] will expand its surveillance of the top 1300 corporate groups to target their compliance with the goods and services tax law and to curb transfer pricing by multinationals that illegally shift profits offshore.
. . .
ATO second commissioner Bruce Quigley said "Don’t expect the issue to go away because the tax manager said it was OK. I know what my response would be to an auditor who came back with that explanation."

Interestingly, Quigley also highlighted the success of the ATO's information-sharing arrangements with other governments around the world, especially the United States' Internal Revenue Service (IRS;) two multinationals are the subject of joint audits.

Good to see this kind of stuff happening. The ATO has been quite a pioneer in the investigation of offshore tax abuses by individuals too, through its Project Wickenby.