Australia’s existing “windfall tax on gas profits” delivers loose change

ABC political reporter, Tom Lowrey, has penned an interesting article on Australia’s Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT), which is supposed to capture windfall profits on gas owned by the Commonwealth and licensed to be sold by the companies extracting it.

Lowrey has produced the below chart showing the explosion of east coast LNG export prices, which are forecast to remain high all the way into 2024:

Based on these absurd prices, the PRRT should be creaming it, given it “taxes profits from those projects at 40 per cent, on the grounds they are commonwealth resources — so the Commonwealth should share in the profits”.