Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by illumen | Hacker News Reader

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They should pay tax at the rate set by law.

Do they have a moral or ethical obligation to support the society that gave them life?

Should the Australian government have supported them more than say the coal or car industry? Hell yes. This is a massive blunder on the part of the Australian government. One that has been repeated for decades.

Could Australia be in the position to provide as much capital as Atlassian is raising now? Yes! There is a LOT of money flowing around Australia. Just a small percentage of Super (compulsory pension funds) could have been invested. Even R&D tax breaks could have given more. However, VC invested by Australian funds is tiny (less than 1 billion/year).

The fact is Atlassian left Australia to avoid paying tax. They have even admitted it many times. The Australian government should have done more to keep them there. Maybe Atlassian leaving will actually do more good in the long term, because more people will see the missed opportunities. (not holding my breath on that one).

To be clear, Atlassian didn't leave Australia to avoid paying income tax, or even to avoid paying any tax. The principal reasons they left were that the Australian market doesn't have the ability to price a tech IPO of their size and to increase attractiveness to foreign investors.[1][2]

Atlassian's approach to taxation is an exemplar of one of their core company values: "Be the change you seek". They voluntarily paid millions of dollars to their employees to reimburse them for the tax that their employees were obliged to pay on their employee share options under Australian law.

Until very recently, Australian law required that employees who receive share options pay tax on the value of the shares at the time the share options are issued (before the options are even exercised by the employee). The application of the law to startups was widely criticised (including by Scott Farquhar) for obvious reasons.

Here's Scott Farquhar's description of how they chose to deal with that:

"Atlassian believes that share options are so important to attracting and retaining talent that it has covered the cost of the tax for its employees, said Farquhar. He estimated that this has so far cost the company a total of $5.4 million."[3]

Fortunately, the current Australian government introduced tax breaks for startups using employee share schemes earlier this year.[4]

I have no affiliation with Atlassian other than as an Aussie who is proud of their accomplishments.

[1] http://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca... (see paragraph [25])

[2] http://www.techworld.com.au/article/535906/what_atlassian_mo...

[2] http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/557248/atlassian-ceo...

[4] https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Employee-share-schemes/In-det...

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