Fact check: Does the Tasmanian salmon industry pay tax?

In the charged debate over Tasmanian salmon farming, a common claim is that the industry is dominated by multinationals that pay no tax in Australia.

It has been a torrid few months for the salmon industry. All last year, there was a slow burn of pressure over how fish farming is affecting the critically endangered Maugean skate in remote Macquarie Harbour on the state’s west coast. Then 2025 kicked off with a mass die-off of more than a million salmon in the state’s south-east.

Salmon farming in Tasmania.Credit: Adam Gibson

The industry won a $37 million federal package to manage oxygen levels in Macquarie Harbour and amendments to environmental laws to protect the future of the industry there – but the cost was intensified political scrutiny and public opposition.

Independent senator Jacqui Lambie is among those to turn on the salmon industry. She says she has had “a gutful” and that the taxpayer subsidy is “shameful”. Across multiple media interviews and on the floor of the Senate, she has also said the salmon companies are foreign-owned and are “making a motza” and yet they haven’t paid tax in Australia in years.

In doing so, she is amplifying claims made by left-leaning think-tank, the Australia Institute, that the Tasmanian salmon companies have not paid company tax in Australia since 2019.

What is the truth?

Ownership

The first point is clear-cut. The three big salmon companies are Tassal Group, Huon Aquaculture and Petuna. Once Australian champions, all are now under foreign ownership.

Petuna was the first to fall: New Zealand’s Sealord bought 50 per cent in 2010 and the remaining 50 per cent in 2020.

Next came Huon, founded by a farming couple on the Huon River in the 1980s, listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2014, and acquired by Brazilian giant JBS in November 2021.

A photo of dead fish claimed to be at Copping Tip, Tasmania. Credit: The Bob Brown Foundation

Finally, Tassal was bought by Canadian company Cooke and was delisted in November 2022.

Verdict: The claim the companies are foreign-owned is true.

Tax

Businesses pay company tax only on profits. In broad terms, you take the gross income (also called revenue or turnover) and deduct the business expenses to find taxable income. You can also carry forward losses from previous years, just as individuals can with investment losses.

Even when businesses don’t pay company tax, they may still pay other forms of tax such as land tax, payroll tax and GST.

The Australia Institute bases its analysis on the corporate transparency reports put out by the Tax Office each year. Companies with turnover above $100 million (formerly $200 million for Australian companies) must publicly report income, taxable income and company tax payable.

This masthead has analysed all reports from the 2019 financial year to the most recent, which is for 2023.

Tassal is in all the reports, while Huon Aquaculture is in the reports until the 2021 financial year. Petuna is not there, but its parent company Sealord Australia is there intermittently.

Jol Dare, a partner at corporate tax advisory HLB Mann Judd, said companies could be absent from the corporate transparency data for two reasons. First, if they were too small and didn’t meet the threshold. Second, if they were part of a collection of companies in a consolidated tax group.

The problem is that the tax group can use an anonymous name, subverting the intent of the transparency requirements. This masthead could not find Huon’s owner JBS in the reports.

“The tax transparency is supposed to be about making the tax affairs of significant taxpayers clear and visible, and it doesn’t achieve that at the moment,” Dare said.

Being part of a tax group also means that profits can be offset by the losses of a sister company, reducing the tax liability for the group as a whole, he said.

Another way that multinational companies reduce their tax bill is transfer pricing, by which an Australian subsidiary buys services and intellectual property from its parent company overseas.

There is no allegation that any of these accounting practices are illegal or improper.

Tassal

Tassal, which also has prawn and barramundi farms in other states, is the biggest of the three. In the 2019 financial year, the company reported revenue of $571.07 million, taxable income of $98.58 million and tax payable of $7.35 million.

Since then, the tax has been recorded as zero or less and Tassal confirmed this was correct.

A spokesman said company tax payable had been affected by substantial spending on research and development and also by COVID-19 and depreciation.

He said the company did not use transfer pricing and that Tassal’s taxable position was not affected by its Canadian ownership. Cooke does not own other businesses in Australia.

Verdict: The claim that Tassal Group has not paid company tax since 2019 is true.

Huon

Huon, which is listed in the corporate transparency data from 2019 to 2021, did not pay Australian company tax for any of those years. Its revenue peaked at $457.09 million in 2021.

A JBS spokesman said Huon was now in the JBS tax group, but it could not comment on prior periods.

Verdict: The claim that Huon did not pay tax was true for 2019-21 and it is now unclear.

Petuna

Sealord Australia, which owns Petuna, as well as deep-sea fishing and sales distribution businesses, last paid tax of $1.28 million on revenue of $163.4 million in financial year 2022.

Petuna filed its own return in 2019. The company said that as a standalone company, it had never had revenue above the threshold for the transparency report, but that it did pay tax.

Credit: Matt Golding

Since 2020, Petuna has been included in the Sealord Australia tax group and all tax payments were made under that entity. Sealord paid tax every year except 2023, when the group made a loss from a barramundi farm in Queensland.

Petuna disclosed that it used transfer pricing, and that PwC reviewed the arrangements annually to ensure fairness.

Petuna aquaculture general manager Gary Neill said the company “pays and has always paid our fair share of Australian income tax, in line with Australian tax laws”.

Verdict: The claim that Petuna has not paid company tax since 2019 is untrue.

What does the industry say?

A Salmon Tasmania spokesman rejected the claims as “misleading and demonstrably untrue”.

The statement emphasises the economic value of the salmon industry including jobs in Tasmania and the fact that the state government fully recovers the cost of regulation and management.

However, the statement did not discuss company tax.

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