Hefty tax bill sees Apple Australia 2016 profit drop by AU$119m

Apple Australia has revealed that it paid 97 percent of its 2016 profit in tax to the Australian government.

For the 2016 financial year, profit before tax came in at AU$132 million; however with AU$128 million paid in tax, the iPhone maker was left with AU$3.7 million in net profit.

In terms of revenue, for the 12 months ending September 24, 2016, Apple Australia turned over AU$7.5 billion, also down from its AU$7.8 billion revenue in 2015.

In 2015, the Californian giant made AU$207 million in profit, leaving the company with an after tax profit of AU$123 million as a result of paying only AU$85 million in tax. At the time, Apple said in its financial report lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) that the amount of tax paid was in line with existing taxation laws in the country.

It was revealed last month that for the 2014-15 financial year, Apple -- as well as Samsung, Microsoft, and Google -- upped the amount of tax they paid in Australia over the year prior.

According to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) 2014-15 Corporate Tax Transparency report, Apple coughed up AU$146 million in tax -- which was up from the AU$72 million it paid a year prior.

Under Australia's multinational anti-avoidance laws, companies operating with an annual global income of more than AU$1 billion in Australia are now required to lodge their general purpose financial statements to the ATO -- as of July 1, 2016 -- if they are not already doing so with ASIC.

The implementation of the laws by the Australian government was part of recommendations that were made by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from its G20-commissioned base erosion and profit-shifting (BEPS) project.

Apple and Google were previously called out by the federal government for employing the so-called Double Irish Dutch Sandwich method, which is a method of funnelling money through other countries from Australia in order to pay a lower tax rate.

Globally speaking, for the 2016 fiscal year, Apple posted $45.6 billion in net income, reporting $216 billion in sales.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2017, the company is projecting revenue between $76 billion and $78 billion. Wall Street has projected an EPS of $3.17 for Q1 2017 on revenue of $74.65 billion.