A new easy-to-use online transparency tool allows members of the public to look up how much large Australian operated companies are paying in tax each year.
TAXDATA, developed in part by UTS researchers, aims to better share publicly available corporate financial information that is currently on the Australian Tax Office site, but requires downloading multiple data sets and manually collating comparisons.
The new online interactive tool can be used to find income tax data for 1,274 of Australia’s biggest companies, generating a total income of $100 million or more, both national and multinational.
Drawing on ATO financial year data from 2014 to 2024, it offers insight into 11 years of corporate income tax. In practice, the tool enables users to select a corporation and view its transparency data through a user-friendly interface.
The collaborative project, led by UTS researchers Roman Lanis and Dr Mikhail Shashnov, Michael West Media, the Tax Justice Network Australia and CICTAR, consolidates transparency information regarding corporate tax data.
Prior to its creation, the tool’s tax information was only accessible through individual spreadsheets separated by financial year, creating difficulty in interpreting information.
Contrastingly, TAXDATA offers an accessible, collated solution which combines data across years into table and graph formats.
Lanis said the significance of the database was as “a tool which enables ordinary community members, NGOs and researchers to interpret data in an accessible and visual user interface”.
As a personal user of the ATO’s dataset since its establishment in the 2014 financial year, Lanis noted researchers had been “wanting a more straightforward solution for years”.
In addition to the ATO’s data, it offers additional insights into Taxable Income Margin, Tax Revenue Rate and Tax Rate. These added financial ratios are given definitions to ensure proper understanding of the database for ordinary users.
AGL Energy Limited TAXDATA Table
There are large portions of data from the ATO, however, not available in TAXDATA. The tool is currently limited in its range of information to 1274 firms across 11 years, approximately one fifth of ATO data.
The corporations included in the current revision of the UI were predominantly selected if they held records for 11 years, were in the ASX200 or were handpicked by programmers.
Jason Ward, the principal analyst at the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, told Michael West Media: “With a keystroke or two you can now find out who are Australia’s ‘lifters’ and who are the ‘leaners’.
“Tech bros, fossil fuel exporters, banks and property giants; you name it… With the federal budget not far away, the usual complaints will be about increases in government spending. But most rational Australians want the government to spend more on essential public services, not less.”
AGL Energy Limited TAXDATA Tax Payable Graph
Professor Lanis said the project intends to expand its services in the future when resources become available. Plans to broaden the database include an expansion of the corporations currently visible, the creation of data sorting capabilities, as well as an exploration of other financial datasets published by the ATO.
In its current state, the tool is generally useful for quick searches and inquiries into income tax data. The service is completely free to use and can be accessed through Michael West Media or infotax.media.
Main image by efile989/Flickr.
