It's not too presumptuous for the community to expect legitimate tax loopholes to be eliminated so that big businesses pay their fair share like the rest of us, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
IT'S A PITY Australian governments rarely match the gargantuan resources invested in recovering even the most minuscule debts from ordinary workers with ensuring corporations pay their fair share of tax — or indeed any tax in some cases.
It’s impossible to read the latest Australian Tax Office (ATO) corporate tax transparency report and not conclude that our tax system needs an overhaul.
Titled 'Transparency continues as large corporate compliance climbs', the report does indicate the ATO has increased efforts to crack down on company tax rorts.
Improved outcomes notwithstanding, in 2024/25, large corporate entities paid a total of $87 billion in tax. This might sound perfectly reasonable were it not for a couple of important points. Firstly, individual taxpayers paid a total of $316 billion for the same period. And secondly, 1,149 out of 4,299 large companies, or 27%, paid zero income tax.
Believe it or not, this nil-tax rate represents the lowest proportion of large companies paying no income tax since reporting began in 2013–14 (when it was 36%).
The Zero Tax Club
Nonetheless, out of a total of $637.2 billion in declared income among these corporations, here is a selected group of a few household names and a couple of lesser-known entities, including several foreign companies, that paid zero income tax and their turnover for the period:
- Insurance Australia Group (parent company of NRMA and CGU) — $17.8 billion (Australia)
- AGL — $13.1 billion (partly Australian owned)
- Ichthys Holdings (NT gas extraction) — $9.7 billion (Japan)
- Singapore Telecom Australia (Optus) — $8.3 billion (Singapore)
- EnergyAustralia — $ 7.5 billion (Hong Kong)
- Chevron Australia Downstream Holdings Pty Ltd — $6.8 billion (USA)
- Santos — $5.1 billion (Australia)
- Sigma Healthcare (Chemist Warehouse) — $5 billion (Australia)
- Microsoft Data Centres (excluding business-as-usual company, Microsoft Pty Ltd) — $2.3 billion (USA)
- News Australia Holdings (Murdoch's News Corp) — $1.9 billion (USA)
- Adani — $1.3 billion (India)
(See more in ATO data set below)
Of course, some of these companies may be experiencing financial difficulty, or may qualify for other legitimate exemptions, for instance resulting ‘from structural factors like carried-forward tax losses [or] heavy capital depreciation’. It is reasonable then that such businesses would not be expected to pay tax.
However, as the above figures illustrate, turnover looks pretty good for many local and foreign conglomerates contributing zero tax, with many posting massive profits.
Legacy media's loose change
The ever-present shadow of Murdoch’s News Corp, a foreign corporation, which has paid zero tax in Australia for the last ten years and the damage it has caused and continues to inflict on Australian society, has not even begun to be recouped.
During this ten-year period, News Corp received a $30 million Federal grant in 2017 to increase coverage of women's sports on Foxtel. It received another $10 million grant in 2020, provided as an additional coronavirus response/sector support grant to Foxtel, expedited outside standard competitive tender processes. And back in 2014, the media conglomerate received an $882 million tax and interest rebate from the ATO (following a Federal Court ruling regarding legacy paper transactions).
While it had also enjoyed other government handouts in the past, the media giant is not currently eligible for the Journalism Assistance Fund. Unfortunately, this is not because it doesn't deserve it, since it pays no tax, but because it is a foreign entity.
While not listed above because they did pay tax, the other two major legacy media corporations, Nine Entertainment and Seven West Media, made $2.3 billion and $1.3 billion in turnover, respectively. Nine's tax contribution amounted to a grand total of 3.4% of its turnover, while Seven scraped together 0.22%.
Nine Entertainment received $16.1 million from the federal government's Journalism Assistance Fund, while Seven West Media was gifted $11.33 million in government subsidies.
So to summarise their collective glorious dividend to the public purse, News Corp paid diddly squat, Nine paid SFA and Seven paid three-fifths of SFA.
Digging and drilling duds
Apart from the above-mentioned nil-paying mining companies like Chevron, Santos and Adani, there is the mining sector's contribution in general, which is frequently cited as paying the most tax. Indeed, the sector itself likes to advertise this on a regular basis, as though it is a philanthropic gesture for which we the rest of us should be grateful.
However, while it may be true that this sector contributes the most tax, it is also true that mining has been Australia's largest industry with the highest turnover for decades, so it is only to be expected that it should have contributed the most tax.
It is also true that the mining industry is the single largest beneficiary of government concessions, with a whopping $16.3 billion paid out to the fossil fuel industry alone in 2025/26 — an increase of 9.4% on the previous year.
So Chevron, Santos and Adani even making an appearance in the nil-tax payers group only adds insult to injury.
Even without the incalculable and irreversible cost to our natural environment, there is also the fact that when mines require rehabilitation, which they invariably do, the taxpayer most often also bears that cost.
This tactic has served mining conglomerates since digging up stuff became an organised industry and goes something like this. When a mine is nearing rehabilitation – meaning almost all the available riches have already been drained from the earth, leaving only massive wastelands and making it no longer profitable – major mining companies usually offload it to smaller, less capitalised companies to take over the rehabilitation process.
However, these smaller companies usually lack the financial resources and technical capacity to properly remediate the mines and often end up entering liquidation. The aforementioned devastated sites are thus left abandoned, necessitating rehabilitation by the government and therefore paid for by – you guessed it – the taxpayer.
Burdening battlers
According to the ATO report:
'Many large businesses legitimately pay no income tax but we continue to scrutinise these outcomes closely, as the community expects.'
We don’t think it’s too presumptuous to assume that the community expects a bit more than that. What the community actually expects is for these “legitimate” tax loopholes to be addressed and shut down forthwith.
What ordinary members of the community expect is for the tax burden to be more equitably spread, with corporations made to pay their fair share.
And what ordinary taxpayers expect is that lower-income Australians, who can ill afford it, be released from the burden of essential government revenue raising.
Contrary to these expectations, in her latest complaints insights report, Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen has revealed that complaints against the ATO increased sharply in the six months to September 2026, with 2,376 complaints received – an increase of 74% over the same period last year, and 180% above the same period two years ago.
Owen said the complaint data showed:
More people are struggling due to the ATO’s debt collection activity or interest charges, or simply need to resolve delays to payments that are due.
At a time when many Australians are facing financial distress, we are seeing increased complaints about how the ATO is collecting tax debt owed and how interest is applied to the debt, often making the amount due impossible to pay back.
The community simply expects that the tax burden be shared equitably among all taxpayers. This is really not too much to ask.
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