The Australian Taxation Office’s 12th annual corporate tax transparency report for 2024-25, published on Thursday 1 October, shows that 1,149 large corporate entities paid no income tax. That is 27 per cent of the 4,299 entities covered, the lowest nil-tax share since the reporting began in 2013-14, when 36 per cent of the population recorded a nil result. The population takes in entities with reported income above $100 million, a threshold that sets who the report captures rather than what the result will be.
Of that population, 3,150 entities, or 73 per cent, paid income tax, according to the ATO’s own figures, and total tax payable was $87.5 billion, down $8.2 billion or 8.6 per cent from $95.705 billion in 2023-24, as the ATO, ABC News and Nine.com.au reported. The ATO’s detailed tables put the 2024-25 figure at $87,489 million. The entities comprise 1,824 foreign-owned, 593 Australian public and 1,882 Australian-owned private entities, ABC News reported.
A nil tax result is not a finding of wrongdoing, and the report does not treat it as one. Corporate income tax is levied on profits rather than on revenue, so a company can record no tax payable after an accounting loss, carried-forward losses from earlier years, deductions that exceed its income, or offsets applied against a liability, and none of those outcomes is a breach of the law on its own. A carried-forward loss, for example, applies a loss from an earlier year against a profit in the year the report covers, and it can reduce the taxable result to zero. The ATO’s acting deputy commissioner, Michelle Sams, said: “It’s important to remember that a nil tax result doesn’t automatically imply wrongdoing.” She said many large businesses “legitimately pay no income tax but we continue to scrutinise these outcomes closely, as the community expects”, the ABC reported.
Mining, energy and water remained the largest contributing segment at 41.1 per cent of the total, or $35.9 billion, despite a fall of $12.5 billion ($12,524 million) that is consistent with weaker coal, lithium and iron ore prices over the year. Oil and gas companies paid $10.6 billion, the sector’s second-highest contribution, and petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) rose more than 26 per cent to $1.87 billion, the ABC reported.
The ATO says its next areas of focus include digital business models and supply chains, “including the growth of cloud computing and the data hosting industry”, with data centres “an area that we’re looking at”. Its scrutiny also covers royalties and related-party payments made offshore, and the gains made when foreign private equity firms sell assets in Australia, Ms Sams said. The Tax Avoidance Taskforce has collected $36 billion in additional revenue from multinationals and large businesses since 2016, she said.
Roughly 140 countries, Australia among them, have signed the OECD global minimum tax deal, which imposes a 15 per cent floor on multinational profits and sits well below Australia’s 30 per cent corporate rate. Laws meant to expand Australian tax transparency after a tax advice scandal were killed off before taking effect on 1 July, the ABC reported. Analysis of the data published by The Point, an Australia Institute publication, said major gas producers again paid no company tax, a finding that is the publication’s own.
Reading the Numbers Carefully
This year’s release carries two figures that belong side by side: the record-low 27 per cent of large entities that paid no income tax, and the $87.5 billion in tax payable by the other 73 per cent. The ATO’s own caution sits alongside both of them, because “a nil tax result doesn’t automatically imply wrongdoing”, and the office says it continues to scrutinise these outcomes closely, with data centres and multinational structures named among the areas under review. Read together, the two halves answer different questions: how much the largest entities paid, and how the office treats the ones that paid nothing. The figures record outcomes, and the ATO’s explanations come with them.
Sources: Australian Taxation Office, Corporate tax transparency report 2024-25, 1 October 2026 (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/corporate-tax-measures-and-assurance/large-business/in-detail/tax-transparency/corporate-tax-transparency-report-2024-25); ABC News, “ATO says 1,149 large companies paid no tax as it scrutinises AI firms”, 1 October 2026 (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-01/ato-reveals-companies-that-paid-no-tax-as-fights-profit-shifting/107204032); Nine.com.au, “More than 1000 big companies paid no tax as ATO scrutinises data centres”, 1 October 2026 (https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/more-than-1000-big-companies-paid-no-tax-as-ato-scrutinises-data-centres-20261001-p6120h.html)
Photo: Greditdesu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Australian Taxation Office building in Townsville, Queensland, photographed in 2020. The ATO released its corporate tax transparency report for 2024-25 on 1 October 2026; this photograph is not from the report’s release.
