David Pocock is right: more tax is raised from beer than from petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT)

The Claim:

Senator David Pocock has produced viral social media content claiming that Australia’s beer tax raises more revenue than the gas industry pays in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT).

While Australians certainly like beer, the country is also one of the world’s largest gas exporters.

Can more public money really come from beer tax than gas tax?

Verdict: True

Government budget papers show that beer excise raises between $2.5 billion and $3 billion per year, while PRRT raises between $1 billion and $2 billion each year:

While Australia’s beer drinkers have reacted strongly to Senator Pocock’s videos, one dissenting voice was Liberal National Party Senator Matt Canavan.

Senator Canavan claims in a Facebook post that Senator Pocock is “flat out wrong” and that if company tax is included then “one company – Woodside – pays almost as much tax as beer excise alone”.

Senator Canavan’s claim is wrong overall and wrong in every year except 2022-23, as shown in the chart below:

The chart compares beer excise (from Budget Papers) with the Australian Taxation Office’s data on Woodside’s company tax payments.

The chart shows that in most years, Woodside pays near-zero company tax.

In the last two years, the company has paid several billion in company tax, only just eclipsing beer excise in 2022-23. This is largely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushing gas prices to record highs, and giving Australian gas exporters $100 billion in windfall profits.

Overall, there is no doubt that Australia gets little return from gas exports. Most of Australia’s exported gas is given away for free.

Other countries raise much more money from their gas exports. For example, Qatar exports a similar amount of gas to Australia but raises five times more public revenue from it.