The latest tax transparency report by the Australian Tax Office shows few large companies actually pay tax at the official rate. Just eight of them pay 43% of all tax actually paid by this group

The Australian Tax Office is into transparency. Large companies have their summary tax situation published.

More than a third of large public and private companies paid no tax in 2014-15, according to data released by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

The ATO's latest corporate tax transparency report showed 36% of large firms had zero tax payable in 2014-15.

However, this is a slight improvement on the prior 2013-14 financial year, where it was nearly 38%.

The entities covered by the report are public and foreign firms with an income of AU$100 mln or more and companies privately owned by Australian residents with an income of AU$200 million-plus.

There were 1,904 companies that fell into these categories.

These companies had "total income" in Australia (revenues) of AU$1.78 tln in 2014/15 and declared Australian taxable income of 9.5% of that or AU$169 bln. They paid 24.8% of that in tax, or AU$41.9 bln.

In fact, the four major banks and the two big miners alone paid 36% of all the tax in this list of 1,904 companies. If you add Shell and Telstra, this eight pay 43% of all tax in this group. That is a huge vulnerability for the Australian tax system. Of those that do pay, the majority pay at a very low level.

The ATO notes that "no tax paid does not necessarily mean tax avoidance", as "the aggregate figures listed cannot and do not reflect the complexity of the tax system".

Here is a list of some of the large companies operating in Australia that may also have business interests or related companies in New Zealand. There are 215 companies in this abbreviated list and a third of them paid zero tax.