In February 2018, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann wrote to senators urging them to pass the government’s proposed company tax cuts. Included in the materials circulated to senators was a non-exhaustive list of companies expected to benefit from the company tax cuts – in other words, those with revenues of $50 million or more.

The Department of Finance assembled the list from IBISWorld, InDaily and the InvestSMART database. In July, a freedom of information request was granted and the list (also called the “Finance list” in this report) became publicly available.

• There is already a list of taxpaying companies in Australia. It is the Australian Tax Office’s annual corporate tax transparency data set (hereafter, the “ATO list”). The most recent set, from December 2017, is for the 2015–16 financial year and includes:
• Australian public and foreign-owned corporate tax entities with total incomes of $100 million or more,
• Australian-owned resident private companies with total incomes of $200 million or more, and
• Entities required to pay the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax

The ATO list provides the exact figures for total income, taxable income and tax payable in a given year. Matching the Finance list to the Senate list shows which of the companies on this list actually paid company tax last year – and would therefore have benefitted from a company tax cut. The matching process also illuminates a number of major companies that do not match between the lists and discrepancies between revenues reported in the Finance list and incomes reported to the ATO.

Many of the discrepancies between the lists relates to the ATO’s reporting limitations, which mean it does not include companies with revenues above $50 million but below the $100 or $200 million thresholds. Nonetheless, there are considerable differences between the Department of Finance list and the ATO data not explained by their different criteria, which may warrant further research.