Australian Tax Transparency
The Big
Rip Off
2.9%
Big companies paid
on everything they earned
22.8%
You paid on
a $70,000 wage
4,110 large corporations earned $3,300,000 million in Australia and paid $95,700 million in tax.
14.8 million working Australians collectively earned far less — and paid far more.
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01
Section 01
Your beer is taxed more
than their gas exports
Australia sells enormous amounts of gas to other countries. There is a special tax meant to make sure Australians get a share of that money. Gas companies pay less of this tax than Australians pay in beer tax.
Tax on petrol and diesel
$19,400M
Tax on cigarettes
$12,500M
Student loan repayments
$5,100M
$70,000M+
What gas companies earn selling Australian gas overseas each year
$1,500M
What gas companies pay in their special resource tax — about 2 cents for every dollar they earn
$17,100M
What a 25% gas export tax could raise each year — this is an estimate
02
Section 02
Workers carry the load
Big companies earn 3.4 times more than all Australian workers put together — but pay far less tax. Here is exactly how much less.
$1,020,000M
Total wages and salaries earned by 14.8 million Australians
$311,600M
Income tax those workers paid — about 30 cents in every dollar
$3,279,000M
Total money earned by 4,110 big companies
$95,700M
Tax those companies paid — just 2.9 cents in every dollar they earned
How income shrinks before tax
Companies can reduce what they declare as income before the tax office calculates what they owe. Workers cannot do this anywhere near as much.
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What they actually paid — as a percentage of what they earned
This shows tax paid as a share of total money earned. Workers pay 5 to 10 times the rate that big companies do.
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03
Section 03
Every tax Australians pay
Income tax is just the start. Add the 10% tax on almost everything you buy, petrol tax, cigarette tax, beer tax, student debt repayments, Medicare, tax on your retirement savings, and payroll tax. Australians pay at every turn. Big companies often pay once — if at all.
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~$492,000M
Total tax paid by individuals and households in 2023-24
$95,700M
Total tax paid by all big companies — on $3,300,000 million in earnings
28%
Of big companies paid zero tax in 2023-24. That is 1 in 4.
04
Section 04
Who pays nothing
These are some of the biggest companies operating in Australia that paid little or no tax. Every number comes from the government's own public tax records. Ranked by how little tax they paid relative to what they earned.
Click any company to see more detail · Revenue = total money earned in Australia · Source: ATO Corporate Tax Transparency reports
Company
Revenue
Tax paid
Rate
1
Chevron
American oil and gas company — sells Australian gas overseas
8 years of public data
$72,000 million
$30
~0%
2
Santos
Australian gas company — mines and exports gas
10 years of public data
$36,000+ million
$3.1M
<0.01%
3
INPEX
Japanese company — one of Australia's biggest gas exporters
11 years of public data
$36,000+ million
<$500M
<1.4%
4
ExxonMobil
American oil and gas company
8 years in a row with zero tax paid
$15,400M (one year)
$0
0%
5
JBS
Brazilian company — one of Australia's biggest meat processors
2023-24 financial year
$11,300 million
$0
0%
6
Optus
Singapore-owned phone and internet company
2023-24 financial year
$9,200 million
$0
0%
7
Virgin Australia
Airline — uses old losses from its 2020 collapse to avoid tax
2023-24 financial year
$6,300 million
$0
0%
8
Peabody
American coal mining company — digs up Australian coal
Multiple years of public data
$3,200+ million
$0
0%
Click any company to see more detail
Some companies use old losses or legal deductions to reduce their tax. That can be legitimate. But when the same pattern repeats — across this many companies, this many years, on this much money — it raises real questions about whether the rules are working as they should.
05
Section 05
How Australia compares
Other countries tax gas and oil companies very differently. Norway takes 78 cents from every dollar of profit from oil companies. Australia collects less from gas companies than it does from beer tax.
$17,100M
What a 25% gas export tax could raise each year — over 10 times what gas companies pay now (estimate)
$1,700,000M
Norway's national savings fund — built by making oil and gas companies pay 78% tax on their profits
$0
Australia's national savings fund from gas exports
This site exists because working Australians deserve to see how the system treats them compared to the corporations that extract our resources. All data is from public government sources. The numbers speak for themselves.