Full details of the measures will be announced in tomorrow’s budget, but Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey has said that the aim is crack down on 30 identified multinationals that divert profits gained in Australia to overseas tax havens through ‘contrived or artificial tax arrangements’.

Hockey said the government would do this via ‘new tax integrity measures’ in the budget’ with legislation to be brought in from January 2016. Under the planned rules, the Tax Commissioner will have the power to recover unpaid taxes and issue a fine of an additional 100% of the unpaid taxes plus interest.

In press briefings ahead of his budget speech, Hockey said the multinational tax avoidance law would be ‘the first of its kind in the world’, with penalties that go ‘much further’ than the UK’s 25% under DPT.

Hockey did not name any of the companies being targeted, or say how much revenue the government hopes to get back, but said the Australian Tax Office (ATO) had spent months embedded in some of the multinationals.

A Senate committee into tax avoidance which met last month heard evidence from Google among others. BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto also revealed to the inquiry that they were being audited by the ATO over the use of Singapore as an offshore hub for billing for work undertaken in Australia.

In addition, Hockey is set to announce plans to impose a Goods and Services Tax (GST) on digital products including streamed content and e-books. This will require companies selling digital products in Australia — such as Google, Apple and Netflix — to collect a 10% GST.

‘It is plainly unfair that a supplier of digital products into Australia is not charging the GST whilst someone locally has to charge the GST. When the GST legislation was originally drafted, it did not anticipate the massive growth in the supply of digital goods like movie downloads, games and e-books from overseas,’ Hockey said.

Hockey said ATO estimates suggest the GST levy is likely to raise $350m (£179m) over the next four years.