American Express has now paid no net income tax in Australia in eight years. EBay persists with its financial structure entirely contrived to shirk out of paying tax but Google … lights, trumpets, drum-roll … has finally flagged it will close down its central tax avoidance artifice.

Yes, multinational profit reporting season is upon us. All those December year end companies are filing and the early signs are that shame is proving only a partially effective form of corporate regulation. Shame, it seems, depends on the capacity for executives and their auditors to feel it, and in the case of eBay, Amex and the big audit firms, it doesn't seem they do.

The financial statements for EBAY Australia and New Zealand Pty Ltd show revenue of $40 million for 2015, a fraction of the real income the group makes running Australia's dominant online auction sites eBay and Gumtree.

The billions that this company has raked in from Australians over the years is booked straight to Switzerland, perhaps Germany too; it is impossible to tell by reading this pitifully thin and illusory set of accounts, audited by PwC. EBay's costs, as usual, are relentlessly lobbed into the Australian operation, so its salary bill was $21 million last year, just over half of its the bogus income figure.