The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released its latest corporate tax transparency (CTT) report, revealing that in FY23 it received a https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/16.7 per cent lift in income tax from large corporates to $97.9 billion.

ATO Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Saint reflected on another record year of tax paid by large corporates. 

“This is a great result for the Australian community. Tax paid in 2022-23 was again the highest since CTT reporting started. When you include the additional tax revenue raised by the Tax Avoidance Taskforce for the year, we collected around $https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/100 billion from large corporates in 2022-23,” she said.

Most sectors of the economy showed increased tax payable from the prior year. However, consistent with recent years the significant increase in tax came from the mining sector, this year with the oil and gas and coal sectors showing significant increases in tax contribution.

“Tax paid by the oil and gas sector increased to $https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1.6 billion in 2022-23, with some oil and gas companies now amongst the largest taxpayers in Australia. This result was driven by a combination of commodity prices, the project production life cycle and ATO intervention,” Saint said.

“2022-23 is the second year in a row that the mining sector paid more tax than all other sectors combined, paying more than 5 times than they did in 20https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/14-https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/15.

“We continue to see improvement in the tax compliance of large businesses, reflecting how the ATO’s Tax Avoidance Taskforce has supported improvement in voluntary compliance in addition to strong compliance actions.”

The 2022-23 report includes data from 3,985 entities, representing a net increase of https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1,272 entities. Of the total, https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1,646 are foreign-owned companies, 600 are Australian public entities, and https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1,739 are Australian-owned resident private companies.

Changes to tax laws mean that the CTT report now includes data for Australian-owned private entities with total income between $https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/100 million to $200 million. This is to encourage voluntary compliance and increase the tax transparency of these large taxpayers.

Deputy Commissioner Saint reflected on the last decade of corporate tax transparency, highlighting the impact of the report on Australia’s largest taxpayers.

“Providing transparency of corporate tax, the report has continued to improve accountability, encourage voluntary compliance and increase public awareness,” Saint said.

“The first year of CTT showed large corporates paid nearly $40 billion in tax. Since this time, large corporates have paid more than half a trillion in tax in the last https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/10 years, before ATO compliance actions.

“Corporate tax compliance in Australia sets the bar for the rest of the world, and these results in part reflect years of sustained effort from the ATO’s Tax Avoidance Taskforce to drive and support increased tax compliance by large businesses.”

The percentage of entities that paid no income tax has decreased by five percentage points since the first CTT report in FYhttps://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/13, down from 36 per cent to 3https://www.businessnewsaustralia.com/1 per cent.

“While there are legitimate reasons why a company may pay no income tax, the Australian community can be assured we pay close attention to those who pay no income tax to ensure that they are not trying to game the system,” Saint said.