AFTER the hysterics of the past two months, the watered-down mining tax has left plenty of companies facing no tax rise at all. Others will foot a higher tax bill, but it will be a far less severe increase than they feared.
The most obvious winners are miners of commodities other than Australia's biggest exports - coal and iron ore.
In a sharp move away from the previous arguments that all commodities be taxed the same, now all minerals except coal and iron ore - such as copper, gold and uranium - will be exempt from the tax.
The budding coal seam gas industry has also welcomed the changes, under which it will be subject to the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT).
Analysts say these projects will still pay more tax than under present royalty regimes, but at least they are on a level playing field with the overseas players that have operated under the PRRT for years.
The big diversified miners - BHP Billiton, Rio and Xstrata - will still foot a higher tax bill through their highly profitable coal and iron ore operations.
But the structure of the tax means they will be able to write off much of their future capital spending.
Goldman Sachs estimated that BHP and Rio's earnings per share would fall by less than 5 per cent as a result of the tax in its first few years, and earnings per share would actually increase by 1 per cent in 2015, thanks to the cut in the corporate tax rate to 29 per cent.
The people still complaining are junior miners that say they were not consulted and will now lose exploration rebates that were designed to take some of the sting out of Kevin Rudd's proposal.
But as miners will not have to pay the tax until they are making $50 million in profits, it will only ever apply to the mid-sized players, not the tiddlers.
