We had a friend of the blog question some of what we were saying on tax, arguing that miners are some of the biggest taxpayers in Australia. Which as Grogs says – is correct. But that doesn’t mean they are paying the RIGHT amount of tax.

As Grogs explains:

Yes, miners are one of the biggest taxpayers, because shock, they are with banks the biggest profit sector in Australia.

Glencore Investments is the 10th largest taxpayer – paying $1.9bn tax on $31.6bn revenue and $7.9bn taxable income, but Glencore Holding, which had revenue of $4.3bn paid $0 tax. And to be honest that is not a surprise, given Glencore holdings has not paid tax since 2019-20 and in the 4 years from 2020-21 to 2023-24 it had $24.3bn in total revenue and an astonishing $27.8bn in taxable income and yet it paid $0 tax!

And while Glencore Investment paid tax, what about Santos Ltd? It had $8.3bn in revenue, and yet $0 taxable income and paid $0 tax. Again, not a shock. Santos ltd hasn’t paid tax for a decade – despite taking in $43.3bn in revenue – guess it must keep losing money and have no profit to declare? Weirdly, though Santos told investors in 2023 it made $1.432bn in underlying profit and in 2024 the profit was $1.2bn.

Yes, iron ore companies pay a lot of tax – Rio Tinto and BHP especially. Good for them. But gas companies like AGL,  ICHTYS, Inpex, and Chevron are notorious for paying negligible or no tax. And we will call that out.