The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has released the latest taxation statistics. 

The stats show Australia's highest earners live in Perth, while the country's lowest incomes have been recorded in regional New South Wales. 

The figures also reveal there were 60 Australians who earned over $1 million in the financial year but did not pay a cent of income tax, compared to 66 the year before.

“Some people earning a million dollars or more paid on average $80,000 each to manage their tax affairs, which reduced their taxable income below the tax-free threshold,” Australia Institute senior economist Matt Grudnoff says.

The group of millionaires also claimed other tax deductions, including donations ($114.4 million), interest deductions ($14.3 million) and dividend deductions ($16.9 million) - a total of $165.3 million worth of different deductions to reduce tax bills. 

“Our taxation system is full of complexity and the latest tax statistics show that some people on very large incomes are able to pay very smart people very large sums of money to take advantage of that complexity to reduce the amount of tax they have to pay,” Mr Grudnoff said.

“This highlights the need in Australia for a Buffett rule, which sets a minimum rate of tax based on people's gross income. This would prevent high-income earners from using lots of deductions to avoid paying tax.”

Of nearly 2.3 million Australians who declared rental income to the ATO in 2019-20, 72 per cent owned one rental property, 19 per cent owned two, while nearly 86,000 people owned four or more.

More analysis is available here.