By Lucy Komisar
July 19, 2011

I am waiting for the media analysts and critics of Rupert Murdoch to mention that the fellow is an egregious tax evader.

An article I posted on the subject four years ago was called Tax dodging helps Murdoch buy the Journal and starts out:

Where did Rupert Murdoch get $5 billion to buy up the Wall St. Journal? Beyond normal profits, his coffers were stuffed by dodging taxes in the U.S. and elsewhere. Some of that is your money!

The Economist, in 1999, investigated Murdoch‘s corporate tax affairs and discovered that a collection of 800 offshore companies help him cut corporate taxes to 6%!

According to the magazine at the time, “In the four years to June 30th last year [1998], News Corporation and its subsidiaries paid only A$325m ($238m) in corporate taxes worldwide. In the same period, its consolidated pre-tax profits were A$5.4 billion.

“So News Corporation has paid an effective tax rate of only around 6%. By comparison, Disney, one of the world‘s other media empires, paid 31%. Basic corporate-tax rates in Australia, America and Britain, the three main countries in which News Corporation operates, are 36%, 35% and 30% respectively.

Here is the full story.