Australia’s domestic banking sector is ramping up public pressure for regulatory and tax reform, after releasing new industry data that starkly exposes the wide gap between the financial contributions of local banks and large U.S. technology firms operating in the country.
The 2025 Contribution Gap report, published by the Australian Banking Association (ABA), calculates that the entire Australian banking sector paid a total of $16 billion in taxes and government levies during the 2024-2025 financial year. This puts the industry’s effective tax rate at 40%, making it the second-highest contributing sector to Australian public finances, behind only the mining industry which reported $70 billion in combined taxes and royalty payments. Breaking down the contributions of the nation’s largest lenders, the report notes Commonwealth Bank of Australia paid $3.4 billion in tax, National Australia Bank paid $2.6 billion, Westpac Banking Corporation contributed $2.2 billion, and ANZ Group paid $1.6 billion.
In contrast, the ABA’s analysis of three of the biggest U.S. technology companies offering bank-adjacent services in Australia found the trio paid a combined total of just $515 million in local taxes. Of that sum, Alphabet Inc. paid $323 million, Apple contributed $153 million, and Meta Platforms paid only $39 million — a sum less than 1.2% of the total tax paid by the four major domestic banks alone.
Beyond the tax gap, the report also highlights broader regulatory imbalances between the two industries. Australian banks employ more than 30 times the number of local workers than the major U.S. technology firms operating in the country, and carry binding legal obligations to combat financial crime, cyber fraud, and money laundering that do not apply to the same extent to big tech platforms. The sector has also invested billions of dollars to build and maintain core national digital financial infrastructure, including $2 billion for the national New Payments Platform, $1.5 billion to implement the federal government’s Consumer Data Right open banking framework, and $100 million for Confirmation of Payee scam protection technology.
ABA chief executive Simon Birmingham, a former Australian finance and foreign minister, emphasized that domestic banks have no issue meeting their tax and regulatory obligations to support Australian communities. “Australia’s banks pay their fair share of tax to fund critical public services, and do the heavy lifting when it comes to fighting financial crime,” Birmingham said. “Unfortunately, there is a current regulatory imbalance that is seeing global technology platforms and multinational payments firms deliver bank-like services here in Australia, without bearing proportionate regulatory and fiscal responsibilities.”
The ABA warned that if the contribution gap is allowed to continue growing unchecked, it will erode public revenue that funds essential services from healthcare to education, and threatens the long-term fiscal sustainability of the Australian economy. Birmingham has called on the federal government to intervene to level the competitive playing field, requiring large foreign multinationals offering financial services to fall under the same regulatory framework as domestic banks, and to increase scrutiny of their local tax contributions to ensure they pay their fair share.
