Australia's four big banks handed the federal budget almost $10 billion in company tax in a single year — and one of them paid more than any other company in the country. The figures come from the Australian Taxation Office's latest Corporate Tax Transparency report, released on 2 October 2025, which lays bare the income, taxable income and tax payable of more than 4,000 of Australia's largest businesses.
Commonwealth Bank leads the field
Commonwealth Bank was the standout, with a company tax bill of around $3.4 billion for the 2023-24 year — the biggest of the four, and among the largest of any company in the country. Westpac was next, at about $2.6 billion. Between them, NAB and ANZ accounted for the balance, roughly $4 billion across the two.
To put that in perspective, the banks didn't just feature on the list — they sat near the very top of it. In a year when total company tax across all the large entities in the report came to $95.7 billion, the big four alone delivered close to one dollar in every ten.
Why banks pay so much tax
The reason the banks dominate the taxpayer rankings is, in a sense, the reason they attract so much criticism: they are enormously profitable, and almost all of that profit is made right here. There's very little a domestic retail bank can do to shift its earnings offshore. The loans are written in Australia, the interest is earned in Australia, and the profit is taxed in Australia.
That stands in sharp contrast to globally mobile industries. Multinational miners, energy giants and tech companies can route profits through related parties and overseas hubs, which is exactly why some very large businesses in the report paid little or no tax. The banks have no such escape hatch — and as a result they tend to pay close to the full 30% company tax rate on their Australian earnings.
The bigger picture: banks up, miners down
The banks' contribution actually grew. The ATO reported that tax payable in the banking, finance and investment segment rose by $495 million on the previous year. The story was the opposite in mining: weaker commodity prices, especially for oil, saw tax payable from the mining, energy and water segment fall by a steep $6.2 billion.
That swing largely explains why total company tax across the report slipped 2.3% to $95.7 billion, even as total income rose. When the resources sector has a softer year, the banks' steady, domestically-anchored profits become an even larger share of the corporate tax base.
Fewer companies paying nothing
The report also delivered a headline the government was keen to highlight: the share of large entities paying no company tax at all fell to about 28%, down from 31% the year before and the lowest proportion in the 11 years the transparency report has been published. Paying nil tax in a given year isn't necessarily a sign of avoidance — a company can make a genuine loss, or carry forward losses from earlier years — but the long-run trend toward more entities paying something is the direction the ATO has been pushing for.
What it means
For ordinary taxpayers, the report is less about the banks and more about the shape of the system. A small number of very large, very profitable companies — led by the banks and the big miners — carry a large share of the company tax load. The 4,110 entities in the report, all with income above $100 million, paid roughly 67% of the country's total company income tax between them. When one of those pillars wobbles, as mining did this year, the budget feels it. And right now, the banks are doing more of the heavy lifting than ever.