Large companies paid almost A$100 billion in income tax to the Australian Taxation Office in the 2023 financial year with mining paying more than all other sectors.
The ATO said tax payable by large corporates increased 16.7% to $97.9 billion in 2022-23.
Publishing its 10th annual Corporate tax transparency (CTT) report, the Australian Government’s main revenue collection agency said total income increased 23% to $3,138 billion and taxable income rose 11.3% to $380.1 billion.
ATO Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint described it as a great result for the Australian community.
“Tax paid in 2022–23 was again the highest since CTT reporting started. When you include the additional tax revenue raised by the Tax Avoidance Taskforce for the year, we collected around $100 billion from large corporates in 2022–23,” Saint said in a statement.
She said most sectors of the economy showed increased tax payable with a significant increase coming from mining, particularly oil and gas and coal.
“Tax paid by the oil and gas sector increased to $11.6 billion in 2022–23, with some oil and gas companies now amongst the largest taxpayers in Australia. This result was driven by a combination of commodity prices, the project production life cycle and ATO intervention,” Saint said.
“2022–23 is the second year in a row that the mining sector paid more tax than all other sectors combined, paying more than five times than they did in 2014–15.”
The CTT report analyses aggregated data from the 2022–23 income tax returns of some of the largest companies in Australia including those with total income of last $100 million or that pay petroleum resource rent tax.
The report covers 3,985 corporate entities, of which:
- 1,646 are foreign-owned companies with an income of $100 million or more
- 600 are Australian public entities with an income of $100 million or more
- 1,739 are Australian-owned resident private companies with an income of $100 million or more.