Serial tax dodgers News Corp, Santos, Qantas and Transurban once again failed to pay any income tax in Australia in 2022-23, the latest Australian Tax Office tax transparency data shows.
The data also shows Australia collected just $1.87 billion in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) that year, despite surging global energy prices. The result was far below forecasts in the budget of October that year. Santos, which paid no tax and reported just $19 million in profits from its main holdings, at least paid $247 million in PRRT, while Woodside paid $936 million, mostly from its Bass Strait oil fields, in addition to nearly $2.6 billion in company tax. Fossil fuel giant Shell paid no PRRT but over $1.55 billion in company tax; Chevron paid no income PRRT but over $4 billion in company tax.
News Corp, which hasn’t paid tax in Australia since a token $8 million in 2015-16, reported nearly $200 million in profits but paid no tax. Transurban reported $4.6 billion in revenue, $46 million in profits, and just $136,000 in tax from one of its small Queensland subsidiaries. Qantas, using tax losses from the previous year, reported over $19 billion in revenue but just $402 million in profits and paid no tax. IAG paid no tax on $15 billion in revenue and $150 million in profits. Chris Ellison’s Mineral Resources earned nearly $700 million in profits but paid no tax.
The biggest taxpayer was BHP: over $68 billion in revenue, $29 billion in profit and $7 billion in tax; Rio Tinto reported $47 billion in earnings, $20 billion in profits and $5.8 billion in tax. After them, in terms of tax paid: Glencore, Chevron, Fortescue and Commonwealth Bank.
Tech giants Apple, Uber, Tesla, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon together reported $37 billion in Australian revenue, $2 billion in profits and $587 million in tax — the bulk of that from Apple, Google and Microsoft.
