One of Australia’s most profitable firms has been forced to reveal what it pays its partners and the numbers are honestly eye-watering.
Top four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, better known by its abbreviation PwC, is a business run as a partnership, rather than a proprietary limited company, which means all the profits are divvied up between its partners.
Recently, PwC has been embroiled in a messy scandal as allegations emerged that its former head of international tax Peter Collins had received confidential tax information from the government — and proceeded to share it with colleagues.
It’s alleged that PwC used that confidential information to market tax avoidance schemes around the world.
The matter has sparked a Senate inquiry and resulted in the firm divesting all its federal and state government businesses for a mere $1.
To co-operate with the Senate inquiry, this week PwC made a number of staggering disclosures including the salary of its numerous partners.
It’s understood PwC’s ex-CEO Tom Seymour was the highest-paid partner at the firm in the 2021-2022 financial year, with a salary of between $4.45 million and $4.5 million.
On top of that, hundreds of PwC Australia’s big bosses are making seven figures.
There are 304 partners making $1 million or more, to be precise.
The salary figures, casually dropped halfway through the report tabled in the Senate, showed that 546 partners made less than $1 million.
Their salaries were mostly bunched around the $650,000 to $999,000 range.
The document also revealed that 28 partners made less than $100,000 a year, however it’s understood they work in a part-time capacity.
Then there were 267 partners who made between $1 million and $1.999 million in a single year.
Finally, a significantly smaller amount, just 37 people, made upwards of $2 million in the latest reporting period.
Only one person made more than $3.45 million, who is believed to be the former CEO.
For comparison, that is, to put it mildly, well above what most Australians can hope to earn in their lifetime.
The latest earnings report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that the average full-time worker makes $1769.80 a week, or $92,029.60 a year (pre-tax).
However, the average weekly earnings for all employers, including casual and part-time workers was $1344.70, or an annual wage of $69,924.40 a year before tax.
An anonymous salary graduate survey conducted by influencer page The Aussie Corporate found that the average PwC entry level employee started on around $77,000 as a salary.
A number of other Australian corporate heavyweights are earning substantially more than PwC’s top tier, if you can believe it.
Last year, news.com.au reported that Afterpay’s Co-CEOs executives and founders Anthony Eisen and Nick Molnar each took home a record $264.2 million pay packet between them.
At the time, that was the equivalent of 2800 times the average full-time wage.
Then in December, an AFR analysis found that Macquarie Group chief Shemara Wikramanayake took home $23.7 million in 2022.
Victor Herrero, who had been CEO of budget fashion retailer Lovisa for just over seven months, raked in $20.9 million in that period of time.
CEOs make a median salary of $2.7 million, according to the AFR.
The average bonus paid to ASX100 chief executives also hit a new high at $2.31 million, according to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, as of July 2022.