Tax paid by Aussie mining giants to fall, rise dramatically in 12-month span: report

CANBERRA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The amount of tax paid by Australian mining companies will collapse almost 50 percent before growing more than 200 percent in the space of 12 months, a report has found.

In a report for the Mineral Councils of Australia (MCA), Deloitte Access Economics found that weak commodity prices would hit profits, and thus tax paid, hard for the 2015-16 financial year before rebounding for 2016-17 ending June 30, 2017.

Deloitte estimated that mineral companies would pay 3.65 billion AU dollars (2.83 billion U.S. dollars) in tax for 2015-16, down from 7.9 billion AU dollars (6.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014-15, accounting for 5 percent of the total tax paid by all companies operating in Australia.

In 2016-17, the figure was tipped to soar to 12 billion AU dollars (9.3 billion U.S. dollars), or 15 percent of all company tax paid in Australia.

The report comes as the tax contribution of big businesses continues to be subject of a major political debate with the government seeking to cut the tax rate for Australia's biggest companies from 30 to 25 percent over 10 years.

"The dominant driver of higher company tax is higher profits," an MCA spokesperson told the Guardian Australia on Wednesday night.

"Reducing prior year losses also affects taxable income, which the MCA's 2017 tax survey found boosted taxable incomes to some extent in 2016."

The estimate for 2016-17 was based on Australian Bureau of Statistics' profit data.

According to the report, 12 billion AU dollars in tax for a single year would sill fall short of the 14 billion AU dollars (10.86 billion U.S. dollars) the sector paid at the peak of the mining boom.

The economic firm also predicted that state and territory governments would collect 11.2 billion AU dollars (8.69 billion U.S. dollars) in royalties from minerals companies in 2016-17, up from 8 billion AU dollars (6.2 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015-16. Enditem