Perth (Platts)--8Feb2013/523 am EST/1023 GMT

The Australian government's Minerals Resource Rent Tax on coal and iron ore miners in the country has raised A$126 million ($130 million) in the first six months of its operation to December 31, said Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan in a ministerial statement Friday.

The total for revenue raised by the 30% tax on the profits of Australia-based iron ore and coal mining companies was provided to the Australian government by the Australian Tax Office, said the Treasurer's statement.

Swan acknowledged that revenue from the tax was "down very substantially", though he stressed the MRRT was designed to raise more revenue when company profits from coal and iron ore products were higher.

"It's clear revenues from resource rent taxes have taken a massive hit from the impact of continued global instability, commodity price volatility and a high [Australian] dollar," said Swan in the statement.

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The Treasurer said the government believed details of any revenue raised by the MRRT should be made available to the public, which was why he had revealed the tax's revenue after receiving the information from the tax office earlier on Friday.

Concerns had been voiced by some members of Australia's parliament that revealing the proceeds of the MRRT could breach the confidentiality of mining companies' tax affairs as only around 30 companies including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata, are believed to be liable for the tax.

The Minerals Resource Rent Tax was narrowly passed by the Australian parliament in November 2011 and started on July 1 2012, and is extracted from coal and iron ore mining companies in Australia with a company profit of more than A$75 million/year.

Questions were consistently raised about potential revenue to be raised from the MRRT, for which the Australian government has set a target of A$38 billion over the period 2012-2020, given all the exemptions and off-sets available to mining companies under the tax.

The MRRT is a federal government tax on the "super" profits on mine-gate prices of coal and iron ore mined in Australia, and is payable at a headline rate of 30%, though after taking into account various concessions the net rate payable is closer to 22.5%.

Seaborne prices for iron ore and coking and thermal coal have see-sawed over the past six months, with iron ore prices crashing to $90/mt in November and then rallying to A$155/mt currently.

--Mike Cooper, michael_cooper@platts.com
--Edited by Irene Tang, irene_tang@platts.com

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