Accounting For Policy On Corporate Tax Avoidance And Corporate Social Responsibility: A Study Of Brambles And Blackmores

The Vision and Mission Statement

Discuss about the Accounting for Policy on Corporate Tax Avoidance.

The vision and the mission statement of the organization summarize their goals and objectives. Both of them serve differently for the company. The mission statements concentrate on the present; the mission outlines what a company wants to do now and a vision outlines what the company wants to do in the future. The focus of the vision statement is the future. It is a source of the inspiration and motivation. The mission statement informs about the desired level of the performance. Therefore, it can be said that the mission statement talks about primary objectives and the purpose of the organization and the vision statement is the statement, which states where one wants to be. Brambles is a supply chain logistics company which has its presence in over 60 countries(Blackmores.com.au). The largest operation of the company is in North America and Western Europe. Brambles have its headquarters in Sydney. Brambles provide services related to the supply chain logistics to its customers.  Blackmore is the Australia’s leading health company. The main aim of the company is to inspire people to control and invest in their well-being. Blackmore is the leading company in Australia for over 70 years. The vision of the company is to become the primary choice healthcare of the country. The company wants to establish a strong culture that promotes patients care, staff engagement by the help of new technologies and strategic alliances. The mission statement is to promote the healthier communities through the compassion and comprehensive health and human services, regardless of the activity to pay. The mission of Brambles is to be the world’s leading provider of the innovative business solutions in the support service. The company creates value by providing the outsourcing expertise to add exceptional value in the eyes of the customers. The company also creates value for the shareholders through the people and their enterprising spirit. The company’s vision is to provide its primary importance to the customers. The company strives for success. The company is committed to provide safety, diversity, people and the teamwork. The company thus, believes in the culture of innovation.

The values that are associated with the blackmores company is the natural healthcare that will be considered as the core of the organization. It is not just the philosophy rather it is how they do the business. As per the company, the success of it depends on putting focus on the customers, innovative thinking along with responsible action towards the local community and the environment. All the values of the company are known as PIRLS, they are behavioral and aspiration. The values of the brambles are committed to zero environment harm including eliminating deforestation; to protect, restore and promote sustainability in terms of the use of forest in the value chain of the company.

The Values of the Company

For the last two year, Brambles limited is included in the Dow jones sustainability world index (DJSI), this index identifies organizations that led their companies in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) (brambles.com). Therefore, it can be stated that Brambles works mainly through the CHEP and IFCO brands and it provided the supply chain solutions to its customers. In June 2015, CHEP North America introduced the corporate social responsibility, which included unique services to help the consumers to optimize their supply chains and therefore, to support the corporate social responsibility initiatives. The portfolio of the solutions is developed to assist the partners to shift products from firms or the shift various product to the different stores from the production center efficienly, addressing the damage of the product and the failed unit loads and empty the transport miles (brambles.com). CHEP North America had identified the process of efficient elimination of the waste of the company and the way to improve the supply chain performance by considering certain facts like logistic, supply chain platforms, international trade, transportation and others.. One of the retailer joined with CHEP to test the new transportation solution and it is been estimated that the retailer will fill almost one million empty trailer miles which would generate a revenue of US $ 2.5 million (brambles.com). The three of the main retailers of grocery, which uses the unit load optimization solution, reduced damage at their distribution centre and the retailer saves about US $ 300000 in their supply chain (brambles.com).

The DJSI considers the analysis of the corporate economic, environment and social performance, it assess issues that relates to the corporate governance, management of risk, branding of the product, mitigation in the climate change, the standards of the supply chain and the labor practices. According to the index, the name of the Brambles Limited has been included in the DJSI because of the code of conduct and the corporate governance. The company also ranked higher in the scale of the climate strategy and the policy meant for the environment. Therefore, according to the employees of the company it is been stated that the company is built on the principles of the sustainable. They are building a long-term relationship with the sustainable business that aims at serving the customers, the employees and the shareholders of the company. The company also supports the longleaf pine restoration in the USA (brambles.com). The Longleaf Alliance is a nonprofit organization that helps to promote to retain, manage and restore the Longleaf Pine around the country. Therefore, CHEP USA has supported the organization for a number of years. In the year 2015, the collaboration assisted landowners and partners with planting of trees 2.99 million trees (brambles.com). The financial assistance is provided by the CHEP for the planting of trees (Navi 2012).

The Corporate Social Responsibility

Blackmore has committed to the sustainability and the social responsibility. Being the corporate and the responsible citizens, they believe that the issues of environmentally sustainable practice relating to all aspects of the business must be addressed by them. The business should demonstrate care, respect for the people and the compassion and the safe and the healthy community. Blackmore keeps on exploring the ways to reduce the product packaging impact on the environment. The recycling of the packaging product shall be increased and the company should develop the sustainable packaging solutions.

The company is the founding signatory to the Australian packaging covenant, a sustainable packaging initiative that thus, changes the culture of the business. The agreement between the industries and the companies that have been made tries to aim at the packaging sustainability issues and provide funds for the same. Blackmore has started using glass in the container since early 60s comparing with the longevity and the protection that it provides to the product. The glass can be recycled easily. In the year 2014, the company made use of the process of closed loop for the bulk deliveries. The use of the closed loop will eliminate the plastic waste (Zentes et al. 2016). It reduced the handling time and the operational costs have also reduced to a certain level and have become environment friendly. The quality of materials that are used by the company is environment friendly and does not include any of the toxic items like mercury. The company is the company has initiated the the use of the “Planet ark Australian recycling label” and the use of paperless order picking. The entire environment and the sustainability initiatives are managed by the company along with the maintenance of the compliance with the Therapeutic Goods Administration high standards, which is related to the goods manufacturing practice that ensures high standards of manufacturing the goods. Blackmores’ company primary focus is to protect the environment from the harmful particles that are emitted by the packaging industry (Blackmores.com.au). The company in its headquarters has a high range generation plant, which fulfills the need of the energy of the company. The company also supports various charitable and the non-profit making institutions by providing funds in the charitable institutions. Some of the institutions that the company supports are as follows- cancer council, Chris O’Brien life house, cure brain cancer foundation, heart research institute, WWF, Quest for life foundation. Heart Ali and many others.The company also supports Australian athletes named- Collingwood football club, holy Wawn and sam bloom (Blackmores.com.au). The company’s festival that was named as Blackmores Sydney running festival raised $ 1.2 million for 33 official charities and attracted 32,000 participants. The company raise an amount of $ 15.5 million for the charity (Blackmores.com.au).  The company also provides the employee charitable scheme for the employees where the employees are motivated to participate in the charitable scheme. The participating employees is provided with the deduction in the taxation paid by them by 0.5 percent (Blackmores.com.au).

However, with the investor point of view the Blackmore Company has the dividend payout and dividend reinvestment plan for the investors. Blackmore provides dividend to the shareholders of the company in March and September (Blackmores.com.au). The Brambles Limited have provided interim as well as the final dividend in the year 2016. In the year 2015, the company has provided final dividend to its shareholders. Between the years 2012 to 2014, no dividend was paid to the shareholders (Amiram et al. 2012). In the year, 2009 and 2010 the dividend and interim dividend both were paid to the shareholders (Blackmores.com.au).

Reference

Amiram, D., Bauer, A.M. and Frank, M.M., 2012. The effect of the shareholder dividend tax policy on corporate tax avoidance. Unpublished, University of Virginia, Darden School Foundation.

Blackmores.com.au. (2016). About us. [online] Available at: https://www.blackmores.com.au/about-us [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Blackmores.com.au. (2016). Dividend information. [online] Available at: https://www.blackmores.com.au/about-us/investor-centre/dividend-information [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Brambles Corporate Site. (2016). Annual Reports. [online] Available at: https://www.brambles.com/annual-reports [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Brambles Corporate Site. (2016). Brambles. [online] Available at: https://www.brambles.com/ [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Brambles Corporate Site. (2016). Corporate Governance Overview. [online] Available at: https://www.brambles.com/corporate-governance-overview [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Brambles Corporate Site. (2016). Dividends. [online] Available at: https://www.brambles.com/dividends [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Brambles Corporate Site. (2016). Investor Centre. [online] Available at: https://www.brambles.com/investor-centre [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016].

Navi, S.T., 2012. Corporate social responsibility.

Zentes, J., Morschett, D. and Schramm-Klein, H., 2016. Corporate Social Responsibility. In Strategic Retail Management (pp. 207-226). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.