ato logo
Search Suggestion:

2. Description of main business activity

Instructions to help you complete your main business industry code and percentage of foreign shareholders.

Last updated 18 December 2023

The information you include at item 2, along with certain income labels, will be used to identify entities for inclusion in the Report of entity tax information.

Describe as accurately as possible the business activity from which the company derived the most gross income (for example, beef cattle breeding, vegetable growing, clothing manufacturing, confectionery wholesaling, domestic appliance retailing, investing in shares and stocks, investing in residential property). Do not use general descriptions, such as farming, manufacturing, wholesaling, investing or company.

For a consolidated or MEC group, print the business activity from which the group derived the most gross income.

B – Industry code

Write at B the appropriate industry code for the company’s main business. You can use the Business industry code tool to work out which code to use.

Code the business activity as accurately as possible. The industry code is made up of five digits, for example, if the industry is ‘dairy cattle farming’, the code on the tax return is written as ‘01600’.

For a consolidated or MEC group, print the industry code for the business activity from which the group derived the most gross income.

An incorrect code may result in clients not receiving a necessary service or material from us or could lead to incorrect targeting of audits. The industry code provided is also used to publish industry benchmarks in Taxation statistics. Our industry codes are a modified version of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC), produced jointly by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand.

It is important to use the correct industry code to avoid delays in processing the tax return.

A – Percentage of foreign shareholding

Examine the top 10 shareholders of the company at the end of the income year. From these top 10 shareholders, identify the foreign shareholders and aggregate their percentage of shareholding held in the company. Write this percentage in whole numbers at A. If this aggregate percentage is less than 10%, disregard A.

For the purpose of A, a foreign shareholder includes, but is not limited to, a shareholder:

  • whose address in the share register is shown as being outside Australia
  • that has directed that their dividends be paid at a place outside Australia
  • that is a company not incorporated in Australia
  • that is a company that does not have an Australian company number (ACN).

Continue to: 3. Status of company

QC67979