The company has relocated its home base from the Netherlands to Ireland over the past 13 years, chasing lower tax rates.

James Hardie CEO Louis Gries. Credit:Louie Douvis

The report, Who Pays For Our Common Wealth?, and tax experts who spoke to Fairfax said the company effectively pays no tax in Australia.

"James Hardie over the last decade paid an average of $0 in corporate tax in Australia and had an average ETR [effective tax rate] of 0 per cent on average annual profits of $204 million," the report said. "If James Hardie had paid tax at the statutory rate, it would have generated an average $61 million in annual tax revenues."

The company has long argued that it is a special case because 90 per cent of its income is made in the US while 90 per cent of its shareholder base is Australian.

The company argued that moving to a low-tax jurisdiction would reduce the high rate of foreign tax imposed on income being repatriated to Australia to pay dividends.

In the past two years, James Hardie has rewarded its shareholders with $592 million worth of dividends and its stock has soared. Chief executive Louis Gries was paid $12.9 million last year, making him high up on the league table of corporate pay packets.

This month, the company was warned by the Asbestos Injuries Compensation Fund, established to compensate mesothelioma victims, that it could suffer a funding shortfall by 2017 and be forced to call on the NSW government for a bailout.

The fund is a separate entity to James Hardie but the company has agreed to pay 35 per cent of operating cash flow every year into the fund.

The contributions – about $120 million last year – are tax-deductible.

An analyst told Fairfax that that tax-deductibility could obscure the real picture.

A spokeswoman for James Hardie said the company had paid $US495 million in tax over the past eight ears.

But Michael Kobetsky, an adjunct professor at the Australian National University and fellow of the Tax Institute, said its unfranked dividends proved that none of that had been paid in Australia and the company could actually be in front.

In 2012, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that James Hardie would receive more than $300 million from the Australian Taxation Office after the High Court refused to hear a $368 million dispute over the capital gains tax payable after a 1998 corporate restructure.

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Senator Nick Xenophon, a vocal critic of James Hardie and patron of the Asbestos Victims Association of South Australia, said: "When it comes to contributing their fair share, it seems James Hardie is leaners not lifters.

"I think Australians are prepared to share the burden of repairing the budget if they thought the burden was being shared."