Tax report reveals Chevron Australia paid no tax on $900m but $129,685 in donations to Labor, Liberal and National parties
New data has revealed that 192 of Australia’s biggest companies paid tax of 10% or less of their profit in 2018-19, including seven that paid more in political donations than they did in tax.
Companies paying little or no tax in 2019, despite declaring a profit, range from the local arm of US fossil fuel giant Chevron, Chevron Australia Holdings, which had taxable income of $900m but zero tax payable, and Wilson Parking Australia 1992, the operator of Wilson Parking car parks in Australia, which paid no tax on a profit of $2.76m.
The corporate tax rate in Australia is 30% but deductions legitimately available to companies mean many pay less.
Tattarang Capital, a company owned by mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest and his wife Nicola, paid tax of just under $400,000 on taxable income of $149.5m – a rate of about 0.36%.
A spokesman for the company said tax had been paid on the company’s income “by virtue of Australia’s franking credits system”. Tattarang Capital received $148.2m in dividends from shareholdings in Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group, which FMG had already paid the tax on. The $400,000 paid to the ATO represented the tax on the remaining $1.3m in income.
Electoral Commission data shows Chevron Australia Holdings made political donations of $129,685 in 2019 – an election year which saw the return to power of the Morrison government – spread across the Labor party, Liberal party and Nationals.
Other companies paying more in donations than in tax included oil and gas group Santos, which also paid no tax and made $148,354 in donations, spread among the same three political parties.
While Chevron has previously been in the ATO’s crosshairs over its tax arrangements, many gas companies also have very large deductions available due to the gigantic amounts of money they have poured into developing new fields in Australia.
A Chevron Australia spokesman said the company “made an accounting loss in the year ended 31 December 2018”.
“Given our stage in the project lifecycle, this is no surprise,” he said.
The ATO on Thursday published data about the revenue, taxable income and tax paid by more than 2,000 of Australia’s biggest companies under transparency laws brought in by the Gillard government.
About 32% of the companies in the data release paid no tax at all, usually because they made a loss.
The ATO deputy commissioner, Rebecca Saint, told Guardian Australia companies could pay no tax for a range of legitimate reasons.
“That can be because of where they’re at in the economic cycle, during the construction phase for example but not yet generating revenue,” she said.
“They are then not going to be paying tax at that point. Equally when they start to generate revenue they will have carry forward losses that they’re able to use in those forward periods that mean they won’t pay tax. We need to accept that that is completely legitimate and reasonable to expect.”
In 2019, Glencore Holdings, a subsidiary of Swiss mining and commodity trading group Glencore, paid $11m in tax on $110m in profit – a rate of 10%.