Business leaders say it's too little too late, after Bill Shorten reversed part of his corporate tax roll-back, leaving colleagues in Canberra to cast conjecture.
If Labor wins the next federal election it will keep in place the new 27.5 per cent corporate tax rate for companies with a turnover between $10 million and $50 million.
But a Shorten Labor government would not go ahead with any other changes to the company tax scales.
The opposition leader announced on Tuesday he would repeal the 27.5 per cent tax rate, but that was reversed after a meeting with the Labor leadership on Friday.
Asked whether she thought Mr Shorten had been "rolled" by cabinet colleagues, Labor MP Emma Husar said she did not know.
"They'll try and leverage this to the nth degree," she told the ABC of the coalition on Saturday.
"But it is a strong sign from Labor we can listen and change."
Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman said Labor's backflip was similar to changes in the opposition's stance on retirement tax.
"To have Bill Shorten humiliated by shadow cabinet and change tack in the space of three days does not point to good policy development process," he said.
Business Council chief executive Jennifer Westacott said Mr Shorten created confusion and will hurt business confidence after his "captain's call" to roll back taxes.
"(Labor) has failed to properly listen to the business community's call to reverse its announcement earlier this week to repeal the tax cuts for business with a turnover of under $50 million," Ms Westacott said on Friday.
"Freezing the threshold at 27.5 per cent for those businesses is actually a tax increase on the 25 per cent rate that has been passed by the parliament."
Mr Shorten said his party realised the decision, announced earlier in the week, would have caused "confusion".
"I accept the argument ... that for companies who already have a lower tax rate already in, we do not want to create uncertainty," Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney on Friday.
"I now accept that simply stopping at $10 million would have created more confusion and uncertainty and it was not the main game."
The coalition government has legislated future cuts that drop the corporate tax rate even further to 25 per cent in 2026/27, but that will be repealed if Labor wins the next federal election.
