Mining tax take surges

The tax and royalty take from the mining sector has hit its highest level since the mining boom, according to new numbers from the industry’s peak lobby group.

THE tax and royalty take from the mining sector has hit its highest level since the mining boom, according to new numbers from the industry’s peak lobby group.

Australian mining companies paid $12.1 billion in company tax last financial year, the Minerals Council of Australia said in a report yesterday.

The haul was four times the sum they paid the previous financial year and the highest since the peak of the mining boom in the 2012 financial year.

The analysis of the sector’s tax take was carried out by Deloitte Access Economics on behalf of the lobby group.

Minerals Council interim chief executive David Byers said it indicated mining companies accounted for $1 in every $5 of the nation’s tax take.

Mining companies also paid $11.2 billion in royalties last financial year, up from $8 billion the previous year.

Stronger commodity prices had swelled miners’ profits and the Government’s tax take while investments in expanding production were lifting royalty revenue, Mr Byers said.

“The $23.3 billion paid by mining companies in company tax and royalties in 2016-17 is almost as much as the Federal Government spent on schools and road and rail infrastructure in the same period,” he said.