Dozens of major Australian companies raking in billions of dollars a year do not pay a cent in company income tax, data shows.
Corporate Australia paid almost $100 billion in income tax in 2022/23, according to Australian Tax Office figures, an increase of nearly 17 per cent on the previous year.
But almost one-third of major businesses avoided a tax bill.
Data released on Friday shows companies that paid no tax include Qantas ($19.2 billion total income), insurer IAG ($15.8 billion), energy company AGL ($13.08 billion), mining company Glencore Holdings ($12.28 billion) and gas producer Ichthys LNG ($11.97 billion).
It is important to remember the 30 per cent company tax was a tax on profits, says Australia Institute research director Rod Campbell, so companies that hadn’t made a profit or had made big losses in recent years, were not liable to pay tax.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had a big influence on company profits in 2022/23, he said.
“So anyone selling gas or coal or iron ore made more money than they would have thought possible, in their wildest dreams.”
Energy corporations exporting coal seam gas from Queensland paid no company tax on $36 billion of income, the institute's principal adviser Mark Ogge said.
Tazpayers should be outraged their resources were being sold by global oil and gas companies “who make virtually no contribution to Australia".
Mr Ogge was not making any allegations of illegality, “but the system is obviously broken”.
Other companies with multibillion-dollar incomes that paid no tax include Australia Post ($8.9 billion), NBN Co ($6.08 billion), Virgin Australia ($5.06 billion), Elders ($3.31 billion) and TabCorp ($2.02 billion).
Mr Campbell said big companies used a variety of methods to minimise their tax bills, including research and development tax offsets and transfer pricing, used by multinationals to realise profits overseas where tax rates are lower.
He said it was up to the government to close loopholes and change tax laws, rather than only rely on the ATO and initiatives such as the Tax Avoidance Taskforce.
The ATO’s corporate tax transparency report showed 1253 entities from a total of 3985 businesses did not pay tax, although this was a reduction of five per cent since the first report in 2013/14.
Of the 31 per cent that did not pay tax, 14 per cent incurred an accounting loss, seven per cent incurred a tax loss, two per cent utilised offsets and eight per cent used tax losses from the prior year.
