# Are these claims about tax paid in the 2017-2018 Australian tax year accurate?

On December 14, 2019, the Australian Greens posted a claim to their Facebook feed about taxes paid by individuals and various entities.

The claim is in the image on this page, but essentially the claims are:

• That the following organisations paid 0 tax:

• Sydney airport
• Transurban
• Pratt holding visy recycling
• These types of people paid tax:

• Baggage handler: $7,872 • Nurse earning$58,000 paid $10,397 • Factory worker:$7,685

• Companies generally pay taxes on profits not turnover. It is entirely possible that all three companies have made a loss. – Paul Johnson Dec 16 '19 at 13:20
• @PaulJohnson As a non native speaker: what does the word “income” used on the sign mean for companies? – Hartmut Braun Dec 16 '19 at 14:31
• It means the amount of money that they have taken in, also known as "revenue". From this they will pay rent, wages, buy stock etc. These are their costs. Very roughly, profit = income - costs. investopedia.com/terms/p/profit.asp – Paul Johnson Dec 16 '19 at 15:07
• @HartmutBraun On the other hand, this page says different. investopedia.com/terms/i/income.asp – Paul Johnson Dec 16 '19 at 15:09
• I've just been digging through the Sydney Airport annual report. It shows revenue as A$1,584.9M, which is pretty close to the$1.55B in the graphic, so they are calling revenue "income". Page 92 of the report shows a charge for income tax of 62.5M, so it looks like they are paying quite a lot of tax. However P122-124 talks about the airport being part of a larger structure for tax purposes, and that larger structure has made an overall loss, so that (if I understand correctly) has swallowed up the Sydney Airport taxes. – Paul Johnson Dec 16 '19 at 15:44