Originally published by Joseph Carbone of The Australian.
01.10.2026
Despite softer commodity prices, the nation’s biggest miners remain atop the list of corporations which pay the most tax, contributing the biggest chunk of an $87.5bn pie.
The Australian Taxation Office on Thursday released its annual corporate tax transparency report, which showed 4299 companies paid corporate tax in the 2025 financial year.
The top-five corporate taxpayers, in order, were: Rio Tinto ($5.2bn); BHP ($3.9bn); Commonwealth Bank ($3.8bn); Chevron ($2.9bn); and Westpac ($2.7bn).
The headline number was a drop on the $95.7bn of tax paid a year earlier, owing primarily to the fall in miners’ tax payable. Tax is paid on profit, not revenue.
ATO acting deputy commissioner Michelle Sams said voluntary compliance among the nation’s biggest businesses was continuing to improve, while the percentage of major corporations not paying tax dipped to 27 per cent, the lowest result since the ATO began its transparency reporting.
“Australia remains a world leader for large business tax compliance, supported by high levels of transparency and the ATO’s dedicated large market compliance programs,” Ms Sams said.
“The majority of Australia’s largest companies are paying the right amount of tax and meeting their tax obligations. We continue to take firm action where we identify noncompliance.
“It’s important to remember that a nil tax result doesn’t automatically imply wrongdoing. Many large businesses legitimately pay no income tax but we continue to scrutinise these outcomes closely, as the community expects.”
The Mining, Energy and Water segment remained the top tax contributor, despite being the only industry segment which declined year-on-year, due to weaker commodity prices.
The segment was responsible for $35.9bn, or 41.1 per cent, of total corporate tax, despite making up just 8.1 per cent of the total corporations recorded. The result represented a $12.5bn fall in tax paid the previous year.
The number of companies paying the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) increased to 21, the highest to date, helping the oil and gas segment to lift its total tax paid to $10.6bn.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ call to tighten the PRRT to ensure LNG producers would pay sooner has continued to bolster government coffers, with PRRT payable lifting 26 per cent to $1.9bn in the 2024-25 year.
“The number of PRRT payers has almost doubled since 2023, as more LNG projects become subject to the deductions cap,” Ms Sams said.
Woodside pulled in the biggest PRRT payable, of $822m across five different entities. Esso Australia, owned by ExxonMobil, was second with $319m, and Chevron third with $166m.
Chevron Australia president Balaji Krishnamurthy said the American multinational had now paid more than $20bn in tax and royalty payments since 2009.
“We’ve been the fourth-largest company income tax payer in the country for three consecutive years, reflecting our long-term commitment to Australia,” he said.
Tech giants including Apple, Microsoft and Tesla were singled out by the ATO in September, with new draft rules aiming to tax the US behemoths and stop them shifting profits offshore to lower taxable income.
Australian tax paid by US tech giants in 2024-25
Source: ATO
In the 2024-25 year, according to the ATO report, the Australian subsidiaries of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Netflix, Tesla, Apple and Microsoft collectively, made approximately $44.3bn total income, and paid about $748.9m in tax, or less than 1.7 per cent of their income.
The top 10 biggest taxpayers are rounded out by, in order, Fortescue ($2.4bn), NAB ($2.3bn), ANZ ($1.7bn), BHP’s Jimblebar iron ore operations ($2.4bn) and Shell Australia ($1.36bn).