A close association with the funds management scene may correlate with the success of international banks at minimising Australian company tax.State Street and BNP are two of more than half a dozen global banks that reported no company tax paid in Australia, mostly as these famous firms had no taxable income.Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan also headline the "too smart to pay tax" club in Australia.Others financial services notables in the frame are AIG, American Express and First Data.In contrast, the Big Four ranged from ANZ, which paid a tax rate of 13 per cent on its taxable earnings in 2013/14, to NAB (20 per cent), Westpac (27 per cent) and CBA, with a tax rate of 29 per cent.Clearly, there is nothing level about this particular playing field, although the large globally defined corporates have been put on notice by the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, and through a programme of events and legislative consultations, and the secondment of tax officials.Governments across the world are hoping the BEPS project, which in essence is aimed at making companies pay tax on their operational profits in the country where those profits were earned, will slow the erosion of the company tax base.