The mining tax has seen a range of concessions granted by the Government following negotiations with Prime Minister Julia Gillard.
The Government has seriously cut the tax rate and reduced the minerals affected in order to reach consensus, slashing $1.5 billion in potential revenues in the process.
In the first move, the Resource Super Profits Tax has been renamed to the Minerals Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) and will now only apply to iron ore and coal.
The tax rate will now be capped at only 30%, as opposed to the previous level of 40%.
This new MRRT will only apply after profits exceeds the long term bond rate plus 7%, as compared to just the bond rate as was proposed by the former Rudd Government.
The existing Petroleum Resources Rent Tax has been expanded to include all onshore and offshore oil and gas projects, as well as coal seam gas and coal bed methane projects.
Due to the narrowing of the new minerals tax, the number of affected companies has dropped dramatically from around 2500 down to just over 300.
''These commodities were not expected to pay significant amounts of resource rent tax, and excluding them will allow many companies to remain in their existing taxation regimes,” a Government statement said.
Due to these enormous changes to the mining tax, the proposed cut in company tax, from 30% down to 28% has been minimised to only half that amount.
''The company tax rate will continue to be cut to 29 per cent from 2013-14 but will not be further reduced under current fiscal conditions,” the statement said.
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