Key Highlights

  • The covered entities had $87.5 billion in tax payable, down 8.6%.
  • The ATO corporate tax transparency report covered 4,299 entities.
  • Mining, energy and water contributed $35.9 billion, or 41.1% of tax payable.
  • No. Losses, carried-forward deductions and offsets can produce a nil liability.

Australia's largest companies paid less income tax in 2024–25, even as their combined income kept growing. The ATO's latest corporate tax transparency report shows tax payable by the biggest corporate entities fell 8.6% to $87.5 billion, with the mining, energy and water sector contributing 41.1% of the total. The figures land as Parliament debates a wave of tax reform and the December budget update approaches, making the corporate tax base a live question for Revenue forecasts.

The headline numbers from the 2024–25 report

The ATO's corporate tax transparency report for 2024–25 covers 4,299 entities.

Combined tax payable was $87.5 billion, down 8.6% on the previous year.

Total income across those entities rose 1.9% to $3,342.2 billion. Taxable income, however, fell 9.9% to $329.2 billion.

Based on those percentages, tax payable in the previous report would have been roughly $95.7 billion, and Taxable Income about $365.4 billion. Those prior-year figures are derived from the reported changes, not separately published numbers quoted here.

The split between rising income and falling taxable income is the core of the story, and it explains why a headline fall in tax does not necessarily signal weaker Business activity. Companies earned more in gross terms, but less of that income ended up as profit subject to tax.

Why income rose while tax fell

Total income is a broad measure. It captures revenue before most expenses are deducted. Taxable income is what remains after allowable deductions, and it is what the company tax rate is applied to.

On the reported figures, taxable income was equal to about 9.8% of total income in 2024–25. Tax payable was equal to about 26.6% of taxable income, below the 30% headline company tax rate.

Tax payable can sit below 30% of taxable income for well-established reasons, including tax offsets, such as the Research and Development tax incentive, and foreign income tax offsets. Some entities in the report may also be eligible for the lower Base Rate entity rate, depending on their circumstances.

For readers, the distinction matters. A fall in taxable income can reflect lower Commodity prices, narrower margins, higher costs, or the use of carried-forward tax losses. The transparency report itself does not establish which factors drove the decline in each sector.

Mining, energy and water still carry the load

The mining, energy and water sector accounted for 41.1% of tax payable, or $35.9 billion.

That concentration means the national corporate tax take remains closely tied to the resources cycle. Put another way, the remaining sectors, from banking and retail to Manufacturing and services, together contributed about $51.6 billion. When commodity prices or volumes move, the company tax line in the budget tends to move with them.

Petroleum resource rent tax payable rose 26.3% to $1,872.8 million, and the number of PRRT payers increased from 16 to 21.

PRRT is a profits-based tax on certain petroleum projects, separate from company income tax. A higher number of payers can indicate that more projects have moved past the point where accumulated deductions are exhausted, although project-level reasons are not set out in the summary.

About 27% paid no tax: what that does and doesn't mean

About 27% of entities in the report paid no income tax for 2024–25. Applied to 4,299 entities, that is roughly 1,160 companies.

A nil tax result is not, on its own, evidence of avoidance. A company may have made an accounting or tax loss, used losses carried forward from earlier years, or had offsets that reduced its Liability to zero.

Hypothetical example: a company reports total income of $1 billion. After deducting $920 million of operating costs, interest and depreciation, its taxable income is $80 million. At 30%, its tax before offsets is $24 million.

If the same company had carried-forward losses of $80 million, it could apply those to reduce taxable income to nil, and its tax payable would be zero, despite $1 billion in income. If it had only $30 million of losses, taxable income would fall to $50 million, and tax before offsets to $15 million.

This is why the transparency data is best read alongside each company's circumstances, rather than as a league table of who "should" have paid more.

Compliance and the government's response

The ATO's own media release accompanying the report was titled "Transparency continues as large corporate compliance climbs". A Treasury ministerial release dated 1 October 2026 carried the headline "Share of large companies paying income tax reaches record".

Both releases frame the results primarily as a compliance story. In that telling, the fall in dollars paid sits alongside what the government describes as a rising share of large companies paying income tax, a measure that tracks behaviour rather than the profit cycle.

Separately, the third R&D tax incentive transparency report, for the 2023–24 income year, showed R&D expenditure of $16.7 billion across 13,490 companies. Small businesses accounted for 6,920 claimants, or 51%.

Changes to the R&D tax incentive are part of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 4) Bill, which was introduced on 27 October 2026 and passed the House of Representatives on 29 October. It remains a BILL and is not yet law.

What to watch

The most immediate indicator is the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, due in December 2026. It will show whether Treasury has revised its company tax forecasts in light of commodity prices and corporate profits.

The Senate Economics Legislation Committee is due to report on the Tax Reform No. 3 package on 13 November 2026, with the government reportedly targeting Senate passage later in November. The status of Tax Reform No. 4 in the Senate is also worth watching for businesses with R&D programs.

The resources sector will remain the key swing Factor for corporate tax receipts. With mining, energy and water providing more than two in every five dollars of large-company tax, any sustained change in commodity markets would flow quickly into the numbers in the next transparency report.

The ATO generally publishes each transparency report well after the year it covers, so data for 2025–26 is not expected for some time.