West should address tax cheats like Islamic State: Aussie senator

Western governments should take on corporate tax evasion somewhat like they have tackled the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, an Australian government politician said on Wednesday.

Liberal senator Bill Heffernan, who also said tax avoiding corporations were in denial "a bit like" churches and institutions toward child abuse, made the alarming comments after years of arguing that sovereignty was threatened by tax avoidance.

The comments come out as officials from tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft prepare to be questioned about their employers' financial structures in the Senate's corporate tax avoidance inquiry.

The Australian government is looking at ways to get multinational corporations to pay more tax on money earned in the country, including lowering the tax rate to encourage keeping profits in Australia.

Google paid a minuscule 224,000 U.S. dollars in Australian tax despite estimated earnings exceeding 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in the last financial year. It also claimed a 3.4 million U.S. dollar grant from the taxation office for "research and development offsets". Endi