Top 500 population: who are they?
The Top 500 population consists of Australia's largest and wealthiest private groups.
Based on 2022 tax returns, the Top 500 population controls over $373 billion in net assets, employs more than 670,000 people and contributes over $13 billion in income tax and GST each year. Given the economic size of these groups, even small errors can have a big tax impact. Their high profile means that their level of participation can influence community confidence, and perceptions of fairness, in the tax system.
Figure 1: Typical Top 500 group
The typical top 500 group has:
- a group head age of 72
- 31 entities, consisting of 17 companies, 8 trusts and 6 other types of entities
- 470 employees
- total income of $304.5 million
- net wealth of $419.2 million
- income tax of $7.0 million
- net GST of $2.7 million
- PAYG withholding of $6 million.
Top 500 groups collectively paid the following amounts of income tax and GST for financial years 30 June 2020 to 30 June 2022.
|
Tax payment type |
Financial year ending 2020 |
Financial year ending 2021 |
Financial year ending 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Net assets |
$261b |
$324b |
374b |
|
Total income |
$218b |
$244b |
265b |
|
Income tax paid |
$5.9b |
$8.2b |
10.5b |
|
Net GST paid |
$2.3b |
$2.6b |
$2.5b |
Figure 2: Top 500 population's net assets and total income
Figure 3: Top 500 income tax and GST paid
How much tax we assured
The amount of tax a Top 500 group has paid is verified as correct through our tax assurance process. This involves obtaining evidence and analysing the treatment of material tax issues and providing a high, medium or low rating.
High ratings reflect our assurance of the tax issue, having obtained evidence that the issue is being managed and disclosed correctly. Medium and low ratings reflect the need for more information or investigation of an issue before we can provide a high assurance rating or escalate to a risk review.
For many Top 500s with large and complex groups, achieving high ratings for all tax issues and full tax assurance of entities in a Top 500 group can take several years.
During the 2024 financial year, we assured income tax paid by Top 500 entities totalling $1.646 billion. This result encompasses assurance activities relating to the 2018 to 2022 income years.
Over the life of the Top 500 program, $14.633 billion in income tax has been assured.
Commercial deals engagements
In the 2024 income year, our teams started 20 Top 500 commercial deal engagements with an estimated $17.34 billion in deal value. We also finalised 24 commercial deal engagements (some having commenced in a previous financial year) representing a deal value of $2.52 billion.
In these finalised engagements, we provided tax certainty through agreements with taxpayers on transactions representing net economic activity correctly reported of $810 million. This is based on labels of the tax return that have been assured, including income labels, capital gains amounts and the utilisation of available losses.
Approximately 89% of our finalised commercial deals engagements with Top 500 groups resulted in an agreed position and correct lodgment, reducing the likelihood of audits or disputes in the future. The remainder were dealt with through subsequent review and audit processes.