Revealed: Millions in taxpayer dollars sent offshore to Big Tech
Wednesday, 24 June 2026
Government agencies reported spending at least $18.4 million on advertising with offshore tech companies in 2025.
Google/YouTube (Alphabet) received about $7.23m, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) received $7.2m, and TikTok received $1.7m.
The investigation involved 153 Official Information Act requests to government departments, ministries, SOEs, and public entities.
The true offshore total could be much higher, with Tourism New Zealand’s $30m-plus offshore advertising spend not fully broken down.
Several major agencies, including Tourism NZ, TVNZ, Health NZ and MPI, either refused or only partially released spending details.
An investigation involving Official Information Act requests to 153 government departments, ministries, SOEs, and entities shows just how many taxpayer dollars are being sent offshore and into the pockets of Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Lloyd Burr reports.
It was a measles vaccination advert that popped up on YouTube that got me wondering how much taxpayer money was being spent advertising with offshore-based tech behemoths like Google, Facebook, and TikTok.
At a time when the government is meant to be tightening its belt, and when local media companies are scrapping over every cent in the advertising market, just how much was our public sector sending overseas?
It’s a particularly interesting question given TikTok is banned from government phones, and the Beehive is considering banning social media for under 16s.
Turns out there’s no easy way to find out. The Public Service Commission - which oversees all government departments and entities - doesn’t collate the information and instead said I’d need to check with each one individually to find out.
So 153 Official Information Act requests later, and three months waiting for most of them to hand over the info, we have an answer - or quite a few answers (and some more questions).
The results
Government departments, ministries, entities, and companies spent a combined $18.4m advertising or marketing with overseas-based companies in 2025 (However, it’s very likely more than double that - see the caveats further down. There’s a mystery $30m spent offshore by Tourism NZ not included in these results).
The vast majority of that $18.4m was spent with just three companies: Alphabet which owns Google and YouTube ($7.23m), Meta which owns Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp ($7.2m), and TikTok ($1.7m).
The rest was spent with LinkedIn ($335k), Spotify ($44k), Chat GPT ($120), or categorised as ‘other’ ($1.8m, which is mostly made up of IRD’s refusal to give a breakdown).
More taxpayer cash was spent advertising with Alphabet and Meta ($14.43m), than advertising with or subscribing to major local media brands combined ($13.7m).
When it comes to local media spending, it’s impossible to get an accurate picture of which government entities are spending where. Why? Because there’s a massive black hole of nearly $8m.
While the local spend came in at a total of $33.8m, there’s $7.9m of it that we’ve had to categorise as ‘other’ because it’s either undisclosed, unattributable, or spent with more niche local outlets.
More than half of this mystery money ($4.8m) was spent by TVNZ but the state-owned broadcaster is refusing to break down which local companies it spent this with. Similarly, KiwiRail is refusing to give a breakdown for its $715k spend.
The ‘other’ category also includes quite a bit of government spending via media agencies (intermediaries that essentially clip the ticket between government and media platforms). A number of government entities couldn’t break down where the agencies spent their money, including the Department of Conservation ($650k).
Aside from that $7.9m ‘other’ spend, advertising with billboard and poster companies came in as the biggest, with a total of $6.1m spent across companies like Go Media, JC Decaux, oOh! And similar (but excludes Mediaworks which has its own category).
Why this matters: The unlevel playing field
Foreign big tech companies that operate in New Zealand divert the vast majority of their revenue offshore - typically via an Irish or Singaporean subsidiary - as ‘licensing fees’, ‘purchases’ or ‘service fees’.
This reduces their taxable profits, and hence reduces the amount of company tax they have to pay. It’s laid out in a report by tax expert Nick Miller. You can read it here.
An example he gives is Google NZ, which in 2024 had revenues of $1.139bn but incurred ‘service fees’ of $1.052bn from its Singapore-based subsidiary. It left a taxable profit of just $29m.
Hypothetically, if it paid tax on the full $1.139b, it would have amounted to $318.92m going into the government’s coffers. Instead, it paid around $8m.
That’s a discrepancy of $310m. All that money is going offshore instead of going into roads, schools, hospitals, or helping pay for the skyrocketing costs of universal superannuation (and a big chunk of it is taxpayer money in the first place, as this investigation shows).
Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Oracle have similar setups. And as IRD reports, there are 800 multinational companies operating here, so the scale of revenue-offshoring could be massive.
The impact is not just on the government’s tax coffers, it has a huge impact on the competitiveness of local companies which can’t offshore their revenue and must pay the full company tax bill.
This impacts local jobs, and local journalism. Stuff’s tech editor Finn Hogan has written more about this here.
It also has a huge impact on the local advertising industry (which locally employs hundreds), which has slowly had its share of the pie eaten away by the rising dominance of big tech (which locally employs around 40).
We’ll look at this more later in the week.
Hey big global spenders!
So, which government entities were the biggest spenders on advertising and marketing with these tech and social media giants?
Overall, ACC spent the most ($3.3m), with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Agency (EECA) some way behind on $1.7m, then the NZ Transport Authority (NZTA) with $1.6m, Education NZ ($1.3m), the Ministry for Social Development ($865k), and Inland Revenue ($772k).
The top five Alphabet spenders were ACC ($1.7m), EECA ($1.07m), Education NZ ($592k), Corrections ($362k), and Metservice ($341k).
The top five Meta spenders were NZTA ($1.08m), ACC ($1.05m), Education NZ ($710k), EECA ($613k), and MSD ($433k).
Tiktok’s biggest spenders were NZTA ($532k), ACC ($344k), MSD ($241k), Fire and Emergeny NZ ($120k), and NZ On Air ($106k).
And big local spenders!
Overall, the biggest domestic-spending government entity on advertising, media, and marketing was NZTA with $7.2m. Making up the bulk of this spend was $2.1m on billboards, $1.2m with TVNZ, and $1.1m with Sky/Three.
ACC is in second place, spending $3.1m overall. Within this, $768k was with TVNZ, $714k was with The Radio Bureau, $401k with Sky/Three, and $382k was on billboards.
MSD spent $2.1m in total, with its biggest client being Mediaworks ($496k), followed by the Māori Media Network ($478k), and various billboard companies totalling ($442k).
Other notable big local spenders were the Electoral Commission ($1.7m), the NZ Blood Service ($1.5m), Fire and Emergency NZ ($$1.4m), NZ On Air and EECA (both $1.3m), and the Ministry of Education ($1m).
Why doesn’t the government close the tax loophole?
Peter Vial, the NZ boss of Chartered Accountants Australia-NZ, says multinationals should pay a fair share of tax but warns there could be retaliation from them if the government tries to rein them in.
“There needs to be a pragmatic lens applied to this. If New Zealand suddenly imposed an extra tax on multinationals operating in the digital space, there's a risk of backlash,” he says.
However, independent financial journalist and Making Cents host Frances Cook is less worried about retaliation, saying it’s about time the government laid down the law instead of letting billions of dollars leave the country legally every year.
“We've got all of these big multinational corporations operating here, making a lot of money here, and then paying no tax. We have to figure out how to make these companies pay their fair share,” she says.
“We have got ways to information-share across developed nations. But we don't use it enough, we don't flex that muscle, and we act like these big companies are able to operate outside the rules and regulations.
“I think the OECD governments need to strengthen their spine a little bit,” Cook says.
A ‘digital services tax’ of 3% was proposed by the previous Labour government, but was scrapped last year. It would’ve worked similarly to digital withholding taxes in place in countries like Canada, France, the UK, Spain and Turkey.
The exclusions and caveats in this investigation
These OIA figures don’t include the spending from a handful of entities which refused or partially refused to hand over the information.
Tourism NZ only revealed a total figure of $30.157m which was spent entirely offshore. It refused to say how much of that was spent with the big tech and social media giants.
If this was included in the overseas spending figures, it would take the overall total to $48m.
TVNZ also refused to release its spending, saying it “would be likely to unreasonably prejudice TVNZ’s commercial position”. However, it did reveal that of its total advertising and marketing budget in 2025, just over $1m - or 17% - related to overseas spending.
If that was included in the overall overseas total, it would take it to $49m. The other 83% (around $4.8m) of TVNZ’s budget would be spent locally, taking the local total to $38.7m.
Both Tourism NZ and TVNZ have been referred to the Ombudsman for refusing to provide a breakdown, alongside six other entities that also refused: Health NZ, MPI, Lotto, NZ Post, Public Trust, and Quotable Value.
Inland Revenue refused to provide a proper breakdown of how it spent $736k with overseas companies, saying it was outsourced to media-buying agencies and too hard to collate.
KiwiRail was similar by refusing to give a breakdown, only giving the total media spend of $715k for “Google, Meta, TikTok and New Zealand based media companies”.
Animal Control Products, which operates under the Orillion and PestOff banners (and is a state-owned enterprise) declined the request on commercial sensitivity grounds.
All branches of the courts are included in the Ministry of Justice’s response, including the Parole Board.
No response was received from Kordia, the Charter School Agency, or the National Advisory Council on the Employment of Women.
Some figures include GST, some don’t, and others don’t say. This means the total overall figure is lower than the actual spend would have been.
KiwiBank, Parliamentary Service, the Office of the Clerk, the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and the IPCA are not subject to the OIA. Their spending is not included.
NZME’s total of $3.2m includes $518k from the Ministry of Education for producing its magazine The Education Gazette.
Some entities have included media monitoring in their responses as part of the spirit of the request, others have not. This means the actual figure for this spending is likely higher.
Many questions remain
Over the next few days, we’ll dig down into the data and uncover more details about the spending and explore some of the reasons government entities have given to rationalise it.
For a government that’s got ballooning debt and very little fiscal wriggle room, why isn’t it chasing these companies for their fair share of tax?
If nothing changes, what will the domestic media landscape look like in five years? Will it be dead, like one advertising agency insider told Stuff? What impact will that have on the economy if thousands of jobs are lost because of it?
There are questions for the government entities too. Why are the big spenders like Tourism NZ, TVNZ, Health NZ, and MPI refusing to release their spending breakdowns? Don’t taxpayers deserve to know how much more of their money is going offshore?
We’ll look into quirks in the data too, just so it’s not all doom and gloom - like Network 4 Learning, which was the only government entity that made money from Meta, to the tune of $105.51.