New figures released under freedom of information laws and posted on Treasury’s website on Monday, which the Australian Financial Review newspaper published yesterday, reveal that the Minerals Resource Rent Tax will collect more tax in its first year than the original RSPT.

But after the first year, revenue losses from the new tax start to climb.

In 2017-18, the MRRT is forecast to collect $3 billion, versus $14.5 billion under the RSPT. In the decade after the new tax begins in 2012-13, it is forecast to total $60.5 billion.

The figures show net MRRT revenue of $10.5 billion over the first two years of the tax compared with $7.4 billion noted in the government’s mid-year review.

The documents have raised questions about whether the government will have sufficient money to pay for other tax reforms linked to the MRRT, such as the plan to compulsorily increase superannuation and infrastructure spending.

The AFR quoted a spokesperson for Treasurer Wayne Swan as saying that the “government had always been up-front that the redesigned mining tax will generate significantly less revenue – there’s nothing new about this and we made this clear from the day the breakthrough deal was announced”