GRANT THORNTON 
Audit Virtual Experience

In this virtual experience, you will be learning how to conduct an audit and why it is so important to keep organisations honest. It is a great opportunity to get a sense of what it’s like to work in an accounting firm, and develop some new skills.

Deadline: 1 December
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Digital tax dodgers, take heed: International leaders have advanced a plan to prevent large multinational companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon from avoiding taxes by shifting profits between countries.

It's an effort to de-escalate a global battle over how to tax the digital economy.

The framework proposal, released on Wednesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, will allow countries to tax large multinationals even if they did not operate inside their borders. If international negotiators can now reach agreement on its key details, the plan will pave the way for new taxes not just on tech companies but on carmakers and any other large multinational firms that operate online.

Traditionally, companies have paid taxes in the countries where their economic activity is generated. But in the digital economy, firms can "move" the source of their profits, like patents and other intellectual property, to countries where tax rates are extremely low. That allows them to pay lower rates than companies that operate only in a single country, like the United States.

Many countries, particularly those in Europe, have moved to curb that practice by approving new taxes on large multinational companies that sell to their citizens but pay little or no tax to their countries. France approved a new digital tax this year that would hit large US tech companies like Google.

Wednesday's release brought an 18-page framework plan that officials hope will form the basis of an international agreement on digital taxation as early as next year. That framework would fundamentally alter how and where companies that operated across national borders were taxed, though it leaves the details of those tax rates to future negotiators. It suggests new rules on where companies should pay taxes — largely based on where their sales occur — and which profits are subject to taxation.

The framework applies only to multinationals with annual revenues of about $US825 million ($1.23 billion) or higher. It excludes manufacturing suppliers and resource extraction companies, like oil companies or miners.