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The number of Australian companies paying no tax has declined this year, and Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has said this morning it is important that the government continues to constantly strengthen its tax system to “pick out any companies that are paying tax at the wrong level”.

Mulino praised the decline – from over 30 per cent of companies paying no tax to 28 per cent – as “good news”, but said the government is constantly reviewing ways to take pressure off Australian taxpayers.

“What we need to do is to make sure that we’re constantly strengthening our system, so that we’re picking out any companies that are paying tax at the wrong level, and the levels at which we’re seeing company tax paid now are materially higher than we’ve seen in the past … that $3 billion investment in strengthening our system, that’s going to lead to an estimated $15 billion in extra payments over the forward estimate. So, that’s a really significant payoff for an investment in our people, in our assurance and forensic capability,” Mulino told Sky today.

He also defended the decline as a significant saving in the government’s budget: “Australia is at about the average of the OECD for our tax share as a proportion of GDP, and we tax at that level while providing one of the best social safety nets and one of the best government service provision programs right across the areas where government is rightfully involved in providing support to people.

“So I think we’ve got a pretty good set-up in Australia, when you look at it from the bigger picture, tax take is pretty moderate, but our level of support for the community is at a very high level … I think that we need to constantly look at our tax system, and one of the ways we’ve tried to take pressure off taxpayers to identify savings in our budget.”