TAX NEWS - JUNE 2010

JP Morgan Sells off Quarter of its Stake in Mining Giants

JPMorgan Chase & Co. fund Manager, Ian Henderson has vended out a quarter of his stake in mining giants, such as BHP Billiton Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd., in the wake of the federal Government's projected resources super profit tax, according to a report on Bloomberg. com.

According to the report, Mr. Henderson, a Manager of $US7 billion, $A8.4 billion, in natural-resource assets, traded the stake due to the ongoing proposed tax that will curb expansion in the industry.

It has been a wake-up call forthrightly, Mr. Henderson told Bloomberg. He said that he did not think that the changes in Australia would be moderately as radical as they are proposed to be.

Mr. Henderson said that the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) obviously abridged the attractions of developing new projects in Australia and spending in Australian based mining business.

Somewhere else, a report in The Australian Financial Review questions the tax statistics that BHP claims it remunerated to the Australian Government in the dispute over the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT).

BHP insists that it paid $6.3 billion in taxes in the previous year plus income tax; petroleum resource rent tax and royalties.

The AFR reports that BHP's full financial statements demonstrate that the miner actually had an Australian taxation expenditure of $3.16 billion for the year.