Try not to cry at the measly amount of tax Netflix had to pay last year

Paying taxes is one of three things we’re guaranteed in this life, along with death and Jared Leto acting a fool on whatever movie set he works on. While for some of us, filing taxes can be painful in both execution and result, multi-billion dollar companies like Netflix suffer barely a financial scratch.

The tax details of the streaming service’s Australian division recently surfaced via Sydney Morning Herald. The entire company has a reported value of just over $83 billion, and the Australian division pulled in a revenue of $21.1 million USD, the AU leg of the streaming giant only forked out approx. $597,000 USD for tax in 2021.

While Netflix on a global scale is suffering, the AU division pulled a profit after tax in 2021 for the first time in history, bringing in $1.1 million USD profit on the back of the aforementioned revenue.

This might seem all well and good to some (?) but let’s consider that around 6 million Australians subscribe to the platform — literally 15 percent of the country’s entire population. Sydney Morning Herald did the math and, based on the service’s varying subscription tiers, the lowest amount the company would’ve brought in from those subscribers alone is around $585 million USD.

Conversely, the highest amount the company would’ve brought in from Australian subscribers is around $1.1 billion USD.

In a statement to the Sydney Morning Herald, a spokesperson for the company simply said, “We have filed our financial statements as required.”

This huge distinction between revenue and tax is hardly new for the company, with last year seeing Netflix bring in a pretax income of $5.3 billion USD, amassing a tax bill of $58 million — or just 1.1 percent.