Capital gains for the rich and persistent gender pay gaps: what we can learn from the ATO’s annual tax statistics

‘Ninety percent of Australians earned less than $150,000 in total income in 2022-23. That 90% earn about 72% of all the wages and salaries in Australia.’ Photograph: James Ross/AAP

On Friday, the ATO released the annual taxation statistics. These provide the data on everyone’s 2022-23 tax returns.

If you love spreadsheets, you’ll love this release – one of them has 167 columns of data on everything from how many people earned “less than $0” (110,372) to how many of those who earned more than $1m had a Hecs debt (73). It also revealed that 91 millionaires paid no tax because they were able to reduce their “taxable” income to below the tax-free threshold.